


Poster Boy

by veritashopian



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alcohol, First Meetings, Gen, M/M, Meet-Ugly, Misunderstandings, The Mechanisms (Band) - Freeform, Tim being Tim, it doesn't go well, jon thinks he has a groupie, jonmartin, martin can't figure out what's familiar about this guy, martin was a fan who only saw them live on grainy YouTube videos, rating for swears, the archivist was the frontman for the mechs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:41:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 36,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23371096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veritashopian/pseuds/veritashopian
Summary: Tim: MARTIN!!!!! stop hogging all the ogling space and INTRODUCE ME TO THE DILFMartin: *middle finger emoji*Martin: I still don’t know what that means.Tim: oh i think you do };)Martin: Go back to work, Tim. Please don’t give Jon a reason to call HR on day one.Tim: oh so hes JON now is he };)There’s just something so familiar about the new hire in the research department, but Martin can’t figure it out. It doesn’t help that he’s acting very strangely around Martin immediately after meeting him. Tim and Sasha decide to help, with a debatable measure of success.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 615
Kudos: 1204





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I’ll apologize in advance for knowing nothing about tea or office jobs

“... and of course, this is Martin Blackwood. Martin, meet Jonathan Sims. He’ll be joining the research team with you, Tim, and Sasha.” Elias gestures between them before folding his hands primly in front of himself, clearly stepping back to allow for proper introductions.

Martin swallows thickly. He isn’t the kind of guy to check out complete strangers, but  _ Jesus.  _ If there’s a collective office crush on Elias as the collected, posh older gentleman, the library staff are going to go  _ feral  _ over Jonathan Sims. With a touch of grey at his temples and the rectangular glasses framing his piercing eyes, he cuts as dashing a figure as a man can while wearing a sweater vest and khakis. He is, as Tim would probably put it, a ‘DILF.’ Whatever that means.

A hand waves in front of him and Martin jolts out of his thoughts. Jonathan looks down his nose at Martin, looking confused and impatient in equal measure. He pushes his hand out once more.

“Hi!” Martin squeaks out, jumping up- how rude of him,  _ honestly _ , still sitting down when greeting a new coworker- and giving it an erratic shake. “Me- I’m Martin.”

“Jon,” he replies, quickly pulling his hand away. His nose wrinkles in distaste as he turns back to Elias, effectively cutting Martin out of the conversation with one smooth pivot of his heel. “I’m assuming the empty desk is mine? I’ll have the files you mentioned done by two, maybe noon if I skip lunch-”

“There’s no need to do that!” Martin says in alarm, scrambling around from behind the desk. He tries to offer a reassuring smile when he catches Jon’s eyes again. “It’s your first day, so why don’t you take a while to get acquainted with everyone? I could make you some tea, too. If- oh, how do you take your tea?”

Jon’s fingers flex noticeably against his palms, held stiffly at his sides. “Christ,” he mutters under his breath, as if Martin isn’t two feet away.

Martin looks frantically to Elias for support, but his boss simply chuckles fondly. “Right to business as always,” he says in what might be a teasing tone, except that as far as Martin knows, this is his first time meeting Jonathan Sims as well. He claps Jon once on the shoulder. “I’ll leave you under Martin’s guidance, then. Welcome to the Institute, Jon.” And then he’s gone, leaving Martin alone with the prickly new researcher.

“So…” Martin draws out the single syllable with a wince. “No tea?”

Jon huffs. He gives the empty desk one more longful glance before sighing and gesturing for Martin to lead him. “Fine. You’d best at least show me where it is,” he snaps. “ _ Let’s go _ .”

Martin, having already started walking as soon as Jon agreed, stops dead in his tracks as his heart swoops down into his belly. Jon leaps to the side to avoid running right into him as Martin whirls around. “I’m sorry?” he says, both as a genuine apology and as the start to a question. “What did you just say?”

Jon levels him with a suspicious look, brushing invisible dirt from his arm where he brushed against Martin’s back. “That we have work to do?” he repeats slowly. “Did I misunderstand my job description?”

“No, not- the other part, you sounded so-” Martin cuts himself off with a nervous titter, face burning. “Sorry. Moment of deja vu, I guess. Happens around here, you know? Part of the whole ‘spooky’ deal, heh.” 

“I suppose,” Jon responds, though the look he gives Martin when he says ‘spooky’ leaves him wishing the floor would swallow him up. “Tea?” he prompts.

“Tea!” Martin agrees, gladly taking the chance to hide his face and turning toward the break room. What is wrong with him? This new guy sounds vaguely familiar and that’s enough to throw him off this badly? Christ indeed Martin, get it together! Say normal workplace things! He remembers seeing a lighter poking out of Jon’s pocket. That’s something, right? “And uh, I should let you know, the opposite door in the break room leads outside, so you can smoke out there if you need to-”

“No,” Jon interrupts. “In fact, please just don’t even mention smoking. I’m trying to quit.”

Martin flinches, tries and fails to pass it off as nothing. “Oh, well. That’s great!” So much for that. And the strange sense of familiarity is only getting worse with every word he manages to pry from Jon. He opens the break room door and holds it, insistently waving Jon in first. “So this is where the tea happens! The kettle’s over there, dish soap is under the sink. If you bring lunch, make sure you put your name on it or Henry will probably eat it. Honestly, he might anyway, but at least that way he can’t use that stupid excuse of thinking it was the food he brought-”

“Right,” Jon sighs. “Where’s the microwave?”

Martin blinks. “The… well, usually when people want a hot lunch, there’s a place just down the block that gives us a really nice discount. Uh, they have sandwiches, and some pizza that’s actually pretty decent-”

Jon waves his hand idly. “Yes, yes, I understand that. I mean for the tea.”

“You  _ microwave your tea?”  _ Martin asks, way too loudly. He glances around to make sure he didn’t miss anyone sitting around, but no. They’re alone for the moment, and he has to deal with this terrible revelation on his own.

“It’s faster,” Jon explains matter of factly. “And it doesn’t make any real difference.”

“ _ Doesn’t make any real-?! _ ” Martin forces himself to take a breath. This is pointless. There is absolutely no reason for him to lecture his new coworker on his horrible tea making and make him even  _ more  _ irritable. “Never mind. In any case, we don’t actually have a microwave in here. Security had I.T. take it out because they said it kept interfering with the cameras.”

Jon frowns- or, Martin supposes, his frow just deepens. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“No it doesn’t,” Martin agrees. “You can take it up with Elias if it’s going to, heh, delay your work by two minutes too many.”

From the look on Jon’s face, Martin realizes that he might seriously be considering it. “What type do you like?” he asks quickly. “If you really don’t think you’ll have time, I’d be happy to make yours along with mine. We have some chai- no, see, I  _ know,  _ but it’s really very good if you take the time, and let’s see, we’ve got some Earl Grey? I think Sasha keeps some Darjeeling here if that’s your preference, or-”

“Martin,” Jon says, and Martin should really be insulted that he keeps interrupting him but he can’t find it in him to actually feel like he’s been slighted. He’s actually a little shocked that Jon finally addressed him by name. “I can handle a kettle, so for God’s sake do  _ not  _ make my tea for me.”

“Oh.” Martin wrings his hands. “Er, okay. Sorry.”

Jon lets out another sigh. “Well, if that’s everything, I’ll be getting to work. Thank you for showing me... where the tea happens.” He doesn’t even wait for a response before leaving the way they came without a backward glance.

Martin blinks. That… he has no idea what to make of that, really, probably wouldn’t even if he could figure out what is so jarringly familiar about this stranger. He thinks maybe that was a joke? Or at least an attempt at social mirroring, in which case maybe Jon is making an effort to be friends! In his own way. That’s been his experience, anyway. People who know what social mirroring is and actively try to do it usually  _ know  _ that they’re not good at first impressions and are trying to make up for it, which is good! For now, that is what Martin is going to choose to believe and he’s going to act on that assumption until proven otherwise.

All of that is to say- when he leaves the break room eight minutes later, he’s carrying two mugs even though Jon told him not to. He went safe with the most generic black tea leaves they had in the cabinets. He sets two sugar packets on Jon’s desk along with the tea when he passes, and watches to see how Jon takes his tea for future reference. The man doesn’t even look up, already somehow elbow deep in filing. He lifts the drink to his lips without adding a grain of sugar, but when he takes a sip Martin swears he sees a reflexive, almost pleased smile. It’s fleeting, gone by the time Jon’s eyes refocus on his work, but Martin definitely saw it.

This time, the flip-flopping of his stomach is definitely not deja vu. Martin grins. Doesn’t make a difference, indeed.

“Pssst. Pssssssst! Martin!”

Martin jumps and looks across the office, where Tim is dramatically waving his arms two desks away.

“What?” Martin hisses, glancing over at Jon to make sure he isn’t paying attention; he’s not.

Tim mimes texting and holds up his mobile, pointing first to it and then to Martin. Martin fumbles for his own phone in his pocket and sure enough, he has three missed text messages from Tim. The first is a string of huge eyeball emojis, while the second is a mix of flames, raindrops, and eggplants. This confuses Martin profoundly until he reads the last message, prompting him to squeak and bury his face in his hands. How  _ fucking  _ predictable.

**Tim: MARTIN!!!!! stop hogging all the ogling space and INTRODUCE ME TO THE DILF**

**Martin: *middle finger emoji***

**Martin: I still don’t know what that means.**

**Tim: oh i think you do };)**

**Martin: Go back to work, Tim. Please don’t give Jon a reason to call HR on day one.**

**Tim: oh so hes JON now is he };)**

Martin discreetly flips Tim off in real life. Tim forms his hands into a heart and winks before mercifully going back to his paying adult job. Martin should also go back to his, and he  _ will. _

… he’s just going to be utterly useless until he can figure out what’s nagging at him so badly. He opens a new thread.

**Martin: Tim, Sasha, drinks tonight?**

**Tim: HA knew it**

**Sasha: Sure thing, what’s going on out there? I’m stuck in the library with Rosie**

**Martin: Tell you after work.**

**Tim: oooooh thisll be good**

* * *

“So,” Sasha says slowly. “You feel like you recognize this Jon guy, and it’s making you feel weird- not  _ bad _ weird, just weird- and you want us to help pick your brain?”

Martin takes another drink and grimaces. It isn’t great beer, but it’s cheap and he needs to not be totally sober for this conversation. He leans back against the vinyl backing of their corner booth and nods wearily. “Yeah, that about covers it. Help? Please?”

“Lucky for you, you’ve got the best research team in London on the case!” Tim declares brightly, already pulling out his phone. “So you said you’ve already ruled out school? Not from any of your parapsych courses at uni?”

“Well,  _ obviously  _ not,” Martin answers. Wait. Too confident for someone who supposedly has a master’s degree. “I mean, at that level those are all really small classes? I would have absolutely remembered a nontraditional student like him, and he clearly wasn’t a teacher.”

“Oh, but imagine if he  _ was _ ,” Tim leers. He feigns a dramatic sigh and flutters his eyelids, leaning back next to Martin. “I can just imagine baby Martin at uni, staying after class to chat up his hot teacher for  _ extra credit.” _

Martin chokes on his beer. “Tim! I would not- that is  _ entirely inappropriate.” _

Sasha whacks Tim on the shoulder absentmindedly, staring intently at her own phone. “Nontraditional? You mean, like older people going back to school after typical college age? How old did you say Jon is? Also, give me a better description of him. There are way too many Jonathan Sims’ on Facebook, assuming he even has one.”

Martin and Tim look at each other. Martin sighs and waves Tim on. “Go on. I know you’re dying to.”

Tim grins. “Sasha, the name of the game with this one is ‘barely contained disaster’ and I am  _ loving it.” _

“What the hell are you talking about?” Martin asks, bewildered. “What about him is disastrous? He looked more put together than either of us! You were wearing jeans- I’m in a band shirt, for Christ’s sake!”

“It  _ is  _ casual Friday,” Sasha murmurs, still scrolling. She snaps her fingers. “Description, please?”

Tim makes a hum of agreement. “Quite. Late thirties by the way, Sasha. He’s got silver-streaked hair and glasses, and this whole buttoned up, stick-up-his-arse air about him. Speaking of his arse, it’s the only meat he’s got on his bones. If he looks like he weighs more than forty kilo, that’s not our guy,”

“Oh yeah,  _ definitely  _ not that guy then…”

Tim swivels back to Martin with a pointed finger. “He may  _ look  _ put together, but trust me; anyone who can focus that intently and that quickly on forms he’s never seen a day in his life is no stranger to multiple all-nighters in a row. Whether he was with you at uni or not, he spent the night in the library every time there was an exam. The competence is a ruse, I guarantee it.”

“Holy shit,” Sasha whispers, and all of Martin’s attention immediately abandons Tim’s nonsensical rant to focus on her. “Is this the guy?”

They lean in closer, Sasha holding the phone steady between them. That’s definitely Jon, Martin thinks as he scans over the profile. There’s only one decent photo on his entire wall, one of Jon sleeping with a cat curled up on his chest. It was recently posted by someone named Georgie Barker, and it might just be that Jon’s not scowling here but Martin feels like the photo isn’t at all recent. He studies this younger Jon’s face to see if there’s any spark of familiarity there, but there just… isn’t. They don’t seem to have any mutual friends, either, though he notes that they’re both following the What The Ghost page. It’s a little disappointing.

“Aw, he’s a cat person.” Tim groans. “There goes the fantasy of a cabin in the woods and three dogs, eh Martin?”

“Wha-? Tim, there is no  _ fantasy.  _ I swear, the things your brain comes up with-”

“Guys!” Sasha whisper-shouts. “The cat is not the  _ point _ . It says here he went to Oxford. Look at the class date.”

Martin looks. Does the math. It’s one year after his own supposed graduation. He laughs nervously. “Yeah, like I said, a nontraditional student. If he went to Oxford, then I definitely didn’t have classes with him. Little rich for my blood.”

Sasha only shakes her head and points imperiously to the section of the screen labelled ‘personal information.’ Martin follows her finger down to Jon’s date of birth and stops breathing. 

There’s a moment of dead silence around the table before Tim picks up his drink and downs it in one unhurried gulp. “‘Nother round?”

Martin nods numbly, fumbling for his own glass. 1987. The year he was born.

He and Jonathan Sims are the  _ same age,  _ and Martin is an _arsehole._

“Tim,” he says softly.

Tim reaches around Sasha to rub his shoulder. He’s a good friend, Martin thinks. “Yeah, pal?” 

“Does this mean I’m a DILF too?”

Sasha drops her phone and doesn’t stop laughing until they leave the pub two hours later.

Martin wakes up the next morning hungover in a way he hasn’t been since… well, seeing that he never actually went to college, probably ever. His entire flat is offensive to him, light coming from too many directions while appliances whirr and kick on and off. He decides to make some tea, as the thought of solid food is making him nauseated.

Something that is making him much more nauseated is the dawning realization that he just spent an evening fruitlessly stalking his new coworker while piss drunk. He slides down to the kitchen tile while the kettle boils, rubbing his face aggressively. 

“Stupid,” he mutters to himself. “That’s not- okay for one thing that’s  _ rude _ . Why did I let Tim talk me into that?” Did Tim talk him into it? Probably- it’s Tim. Either way, they didn’t manage to find any connection, any reason that Martin might have for previously knowing Jon. He can still  _ feel  _ it, though. It must be something about his voice, or his tone, or- hell, maybe it’s just his diction? Martin doesn’t get any ideas looking at the man- and he knows that for sure now, after going through all of the pictures he has on social media- so it must be something else.

Well, he’s not going to sit around and go crazy over that all weekend. He refuses. He has adult things to do, like laundry and cleaning and meal planning, and that’s all way more important than the Jonathan Sims problem.

The kettle starts whistling, and Martin picks himself up. He pulls a face when he catches a whiff of himself- he fell asleep in the clothes he was wearing the day before, and he forgot to turn the fan on last night. As much as he loves this Mechs shirt, it  _ desperately _ needs a wash.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Familiarity continues. Friendships and apologies fail. You didn't think this was going to be cute and fun, did you?

Martin means to say something to Jon on Monday. Really, he does! He practices it in front of the mirror and everything- he’s never had to apologize to anyone for thinking that they were nearly twenty years older than they really are, so he’d rather not go in blind. 

Tim was right about one thing, though; Jon can bury himself in paperwork like a man possessed by a demon of fastidious filing. He gives Martin no opportunity at all to even talk to him about anything that isn’t directly work related. Every time he tries, Jon finds something wrong with Martin’s work and makes him run off to fix it. He doesn’t even manage to make tea for himself, let alone Jon, because he’s so busy re-doing the work. The day ends before he can really even process it, so he decides that he absolutely has to apologize on Tuesday. 

That’s the plan, right up until he walks into the Institute and sees Tim already chatting Jon up. He’s bent nearly in half with his elbows resting on the desk, luxuriating in a purposefully casual pose that Martin recognizes all too well. He groans and hurries to his own desk to try and distract himself with work, but he can still easily hear every word of their non-conversation.

“So yeah, you missed out on a great night! You should come out with us sometime,” Tim suggests. “I know you declined on Friday, but once we warm up to each other I think we could be _great_ friends.”

Jon continues typing away. “Mhmm.”

“Oh, I totally get that. Not much of a partier, eh? Straight-laced guy like you, I’d say you probably didn’t see too many ragers back at Oxford.” Tim nonchalantly flicks the hair out of his eyes and puts on his most winning smile. “If you want, you could just come back to mine for drinks instead.”

The air in the office feels incrementally colder as Jon finally looks up, eyes hard. “And just how did you know I went to Oxford?”

“ _Tim,”_ Martin calls out frantically. “Did you have any luck with the de Luca file? Elias wants that farmland appraisal by lunch and I couldn’t find it anywhere in our system.” He makes a pointed face at Tim, silently begging him to just _stop already._

“Right, right. In a jiff, Martin.” Tim makes no move to leave Jon’s desk. “Well, since you declined to go drinking with us on Friday I took the liberty of looking you up on Facebook. _Cute_ cat, by the way.”

As Martin looks on in horror, Jon’s shoulders inch closer and closer to his ears with every word Tim speaks. When he mentions the cat, however, Jon relaxes fractionally. “Oh, well… thank you, Tim. The Admiral’s not mine, but he is very… cute, yes. I’m rather fond of him.”

Okay, that’s objectively adorable. Without thinking, Martin pipes up, “The Admiral is such a cute name for a cat! Are there others in the fleet? A Captain? A First Mate?”

The tension jumps back into Jon’s shoulders as quickly as if he’s been electrocuted. He glares at Martin briefly before hunching back in on himself. “No, there aren’t. Tim, give him the de Luca file. I didn’t go through the trouble of digging it up for it to sit on your desk all day.”

“Aye, Captain!” Tim jokes as he saunters off. 

Jon grumbles something under his breath that Martin doesn’t catch. Maybe he should wait until tomorrow?

Jon pauses for a moment, curses, and slaps the computer monitor before standing up and stalking off toward the break room. 

Yeah, definitely waiting for tomorrow. Martin’s phone is instantly in his hand.

**Martin: Tim, I’m going to kill you.**

**Tim: oh come on it was funny! did you see his face when he asked about oxford**

**Martin: Yes, and it was a very angry face! Why did you tell him we cyberstalked him?!**

**Tim: au contraire my good man i told him that i cyberstalked him. your in the clear**

Martin sighs. 

**Martin: You’re***

**Tim: you wound me martin :’( you cut me deep**

Wednesday is when he decides to try a less direct approach. Even Jon can’t interrupt the written word. Still, an email would be weird, right? Jon could just delete it and Martin would never know. Same with a text, which he can’t do anyway because he doesn’t have Jon’s number. (Nor does he particularly _want it, thank you Tim._ ) A full blown letter would be so _formal,_ though. So on Wednesday afternoon Martin pulls out his collection of color coded Post-It notes and scribbles a note while Jon’s away from his desk.

_Hi, Jon! I wanted to apologize for Tim and the whole Facebook thing. It’s always a bit awkward meeting new people, but I hope we can get to know each other better. You’re part of the crew now, and we’re glad to have you aboard, microwaved tea and all._

_-Martin_

There. Short, humorous, and above all, very casual. Martin even scribbles a few little stars on the note. That’s _so_ casual! And not nearly as mortifying as putting a heart next to his name, like he reflexively had on the first draft. That note now lays at the bottom of the waste basket next to his desk, never to see the light of day. 

Tim meets his eyes across the office and gives him a thumbs up; good, Jon isn’t on his way back yet. Martin quickly stands up and goes over to Jon’s desk, smoothing down the sticky side of the note so it hangs at the top of the computer screen. He scurries back to his desk and sits down just as he hears a door open. 

Jon enters the room with one arm full of manila folders and the other clamping a box of papers to his side. He dumps the whole pile on his desk and gets right to work. Then he barks out Martin’s name, calling him over to take some of the workload, and the next time Martin comes up for air he sees the note back on his own desk, having come unstuck from the back of the last folder Jon gave him. His heart sinks. So much for that.

Thursday he spends in quiet contemplation. Maybe if he can figure this whole mess out, he’ll have an easier time apologizing. So he watches Jon as often as he watches his own work, and lets Sasha and Tim tease him for it without complaint. He can’t help it; every time Jon speaks, Martin feels that same familiarity deep in his chest. It’s not there in everything he says, not quite, but every now and again a seemingly random word will resonate so clearly that he gets vertigo. Among other, more unfortunate ailments.

**Tim: im sorry mate but there is no way i can help you figure out why the word ‘brass’ gave you a stiffy**

**Martin: TIM**

**Sasha: Oh my God**

**Martin: THIS IS NOT THE RIGHT CONVERSATION**

**Tim: lol my bad**

**Sasha: For goodness sake Martin did you really?**

**Martin: No!!**

**Tim: yeah lol**

He can’t look at Jon _or_ Sasha for the rest of the day.

When Friday comes back around and Martin still hasn’t had a chance to talk to Jon, it finally occurs to him that maybe that’s just what Jon wants. Jon doesn’t want anything to do with Martin at all because Martin is a weirdo who stalks people online and ogles them at work and _makes them drink tea from a kettle._ That’s probably grounds for an automatic embargo on friendship in Jon’s book.

The thought is more than a little depressing. Martin _likes_ Jon, is the thing. Somehow. Every time the man snaps at him or averts his eyes, it doesn’t feel malicious. A little rude, yeah, but mainly just awkward. It’s like Jon is scared of something, always throwing himself into work with a scary intensity as if falling behind will have some sort of terrible consequence. He’s gotten more done in his first week of work than Martin feels like he’s done in the last month by arriving early, working through lunch, and clocking out hours after the rest of them have gone home. All in all, the man probably needs a _break._

“So Jon,” Sasha says casually as she’s pulling on her coat. “The research team usually goes to the pub on Fridays. Sorry for not insisting harder that you tag along last week, we figured we had best keep you from seeing us at our worst for at least a few days.”

“No problem at all,” Jon replies. Martin pokes his head through the neck of his jumper to see that he hasn’t stopped tapping away at his keyboard. “I don’t drink, and I like to stay on top of things so they don’t pile up over the weekend. You all go on.”

“Come ooooon,” Tim drawls as he grabs his own jacket. “You’ve been working too hard, Jonny. Come out with us!” He takes Jon’s coat from the rack and lobs it at him before Martin can stop him. The coat lands draped over Jon’s head, and he freezes with a furious red on his dark cheeks.

“It’s _Jon,_ ” he snaps with more venom than Martin’s heard come from him yet. He yanks his coat down from his head and glares at all three of them. “It is _Jon._ Not Jonny, not Jack, _Jon,_ and I honestly wish you wouldn’t even call me _that._ And I will not be going drinking with you tonight, or any other night. Am I being clear?”

Martin holds his breath. Jon looks genuinely angry now, whereas before he’d merely been put-off and irritated. After wearing off from the shock of being snapped at so suddenly, Tim looks pretty mad too. Martin doesn’t even want to think about what would happen if they got into an argument, or even a _fight._

He holds up his hands in surrender and steps forward to interrupt their lines of sight. “Whoa, whoa, it’s okay. Jon, I’m sorry for- for that, and everything else leading up to now. I’ve been trying to apologize all week, but-”

“I’ve noticed,” Jon says, clipped and cold. “I was going to try and let this pass by without comment, as it happens more often than you’d think. But if you’re dead set on being a nuisance about it, you can apologize by _leaving me alone_ instead of inviting yourself to my company because you think you somehow _know_ me _._ ”

It’s like Jon punched him in the stomach. Martin actually staggers back in shock and hurt, only avoiding the coat rack because of Sasha’s steadying hand on his shoulder. Jon… Jon noticed? He knew all along that Martin felt this inexplicable connection, and he didn’t say a word about it? Of course he didn’t- all of Martin’s curious overtures of friendship were apparently nothing but a nuisance. Martin can’t even find it in himself to blame him for feeling that way; all of the actions he’s taken in the past week, when put together, would be more than enough to make any sane person hate him. A high, pained sound gets stuck in his throat at the thought.

Oh God. Jon actually _hates_ him. 

Tim takes one look at Martin’s face and rounds on Jon with his fists clenched. “Alright you bug-eyed little creep, what the fuck is your problem?”

“ _Me?_ ” Jon demands incredulously. “The- _he’s_ the one with the problem!”

“And what problem would that be?” Elias asks from the doorway, eyebrows raised. 

All four of them jump and look to their boss in a panic, Jon most of all. He looks downright terrified, eyes darting uncontrollably between Elias and Martin. Martin feels a bead of cold sweat drip down the back of his neck. “Nothing!” he all but shouts. “There’s no problem here, is there guys?”

Tim and Sasha both look at him like he’s gone mad, but Martin waves them off as inconspicuously as he can while trying to keep his hands from shaking. He gives Elias a big, fake smile. “Sorry for the commotion, Mr. Bouchard. Tim saw a spider on Jon’s coat and threw it to get it away from him. Jon killed it. And, er, I kind of told them both off for it. Spiders, they’re an important part of the ecosystem, y’know?”

It’s a terrible lie, but Elias almost seems pleased with the explanation. “Well, that’s certainly an admirable mindset to have, Martin. If that’s all it is, I’ll leave you all to your pub night. Jon, I trust you’ll lock up as you have been. See you Monday!” He gives them all a smile and departs as suddenly as he appeared.

Martin, Tim, and Sasha all stare down Jon, who has the decency to look chagrined. His mouth opens and closes mechanically several times, but nothing comes out for a long moment. “Thank you,” he finally grits out. “I appreciate your… discretion.”

Tim is already steering Martin toward the door before he can respond. “Sure,” he snaps. “ _Now_ you have some fucking decency.”

“Tim,” Martin protests weakly, but Tim doesn’t stop.

“Stop defending him, Martin! He’s been an arse to you since he got here and you can’t make excuses forever. Now here’s what’s going to happen,” Tim tells Jon. “You’re going to leave whatever _deal_ you apparently have with Martin at the institute door. Leave him the hell alone. In return, I _won’t_ rearrange your face or go to Elias about this and we’ll forget this whole day ever happened. That sound square, Jonny?”

“For the last time, it’s-!” Jon pinches the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes, nodding defeatedly. “Yes. That sounds perfectly square. Although I will request that if I’m not allowed to bother Martin, he should not be allowed to bother me either. I don’t need any more _fanmail_.”

Martin gapes. “I- I’m so-”

“The _door,_ Sims!” Tim reminds him pointedly, shoving his arms into his jacket sleeves. “Come on you two, let him rot for all I care.” Sasha shepherds Martin out the door, right arm looped through his left, and as soon as they’re outside Tim takes up his position on Martin’s other side, muttering darkly all the while. “Fucking bastard, that one. Best give up that big gay crush you’ve got, Martin. He’s not worthy of you.”

He… he’s right. About both of it, the crush and the worthiness. He isn’t sure when exactly the feeling of deja vu transferred completely into something else, but whatever it was is properly dead now. Probably. They’ll find out when he’s had enough alcohol in his system.

The streetlights blur in front of Martin’s eyes. “I don’t want to talk about that,” he says woodenly. “Will one of you just get me drunk enough that I forget all about this whole thing?”

Sasha stops walking, pulling all three of them to a halt. She puts both hands firmly on Martin’s shoulders and looks deep into his eyes. “Martin Blackwood,” she says. “It would be my fucking honor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh no, what's this? Miscommunication and Martin being sad? In MY Magnus Archives? Say it ain't so....


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin gets so close to the point that it’s physically painful

Some people take a look at Martin Blackwood’s young life and think it’s only a matter of time before it goes off the rails- no father to speak of, a mother who needs more and more care by the day, and no real idea of what he wants to do with his life. But in spite of all that, Martin has always tried to be a good kid. He’s done decently in high school, hasn’t done any hard drugs, and he’s still optimistic enough about his mum’s health that he decides to go on a short university tour on his own. 

Oxford is obviously not on the table for him, not with his average grades and lack of athletic background, but no one there needs to know that. Martin enjoys touring the area, taking in the architecture and the libraries and imagining himself in different nooks and crannies, patches on his elbows and a poetry journal constantly in hand. He makes a whole day of it, wandering the place alone and sitting on old stone benches until he realizes that it’s getting dark. He’s absolutely going to miss the last train home. 

He makes a quick call to his mum to let her know he won’t be home that night and not to worry. He tells her he loves her. She replies in the same tone she uses when rattling off grocery lists. Martin hangs up.

A gaggle of students crosses the green in front of him, huddled together and laughing as they go. Their eyes shift in a way that makes them seem a hundred times more suspicious than they probably want to be, which means they have to be on their way to somewhere fun. Martin takes in the dark makeup, the patchwork clothes, the clumsily dyed hair, and the familiar patterns of the pins they’ve stuck into denim vests and leather jackets. 

“Uh,” he calls out, lurching to his feet. “Sorry, um, are you all…”

A boy with spiky earrings near the back of the group hesitates, glancing back at him. Martin’s face heats under the scrutiny of his sharp eyes. He knows he doesn’t look like he belongs with them, all soft and sweater-vested as he is. At least it’s black and not the yellow one he was going to wear. But he offers an uncertain smile. “I… I like your hair. And your pins.”

That prompts a few of the others to stop, too. They exchange glances, a silent conversation that Martin is almost glad he can’t hear. The first boy looks him up and down one more time before jerking his chin. “Come on then,” he says, and Martin grins. He might have tried to be good, sure. But he’s never stopped looking up to those who are brave enough not to try quite so hard. 

They help him get a little less square as they walk. Terri of the Spiky Ears confiscates his glasses as soon as he confirms he won’t actually crash into anything without them. ”I’ll keep them in the case with mine so they don’t get broken,” he promises. 

Lee crams a grungy beanie over Martin’s ginger curls to help cover the fact that he’s the only one without a dye job, and Zed kindly tells him that he can pick any of the pins they have on their vest. Honored and humbled, he selects two; one a simple circle striped with pink, blue, and purple and the other an anatomically accurate heart. He pins both to the front of the beanie, so he’s more likely to remember to return it all when this is over. 

Van checks with him to make sure it’s okay before rolling up his sleeves and undoing the first button of his shirt. “It’s gonna get hot in there,” she says by way of explanation. “Don’t overdo it, kid.”

“Okay,” Martin agrees hazily. “What’s going to get hot, again?”

Apparently, the answer to that is _everything._ Martin finds himself sandwiched between his new friends and at least thirty other strangers in the dark basement of a student house. Flashing lights and artificial smoke surround a small, unsturdy looking stage with maybe half a dozen wildly dressed people standing around, tuning and sound checking. Without his glasses, he really can’t tell much about them except that they’re all dressed in more layers than he can imagine would be comfortable. 

“Who is this again?” he asks Terri, who shakes his head. 

“You’ll know soon enough,” he says ominously.

As if summoned by his statement, a man struts- yes, actually _struts-_ onto the stage. The others around him perk up, hands stilling on their instruments as the newcomer takes a corded microphone in hand. There’s a small but enthusiastic smattering of applause; clearly, the people who have seen this group before are eager for more.

“You call that a fucking welcome? If I could still feel, I think I might be offended,” the frontman sneers into the mic, and Martin’s hand flies to his mouth in shock. That’s- okay, he’s never been to a show like this before, but this guy seems maybe a little too mean? 

Terri notices his reaction and snorts, throwing an arm over his shoulder. “Just wait, darling. This is nothing.”

“You shouldn’t be the one feeling offended,” one of the other band members pipes up. “They’re clapping for _me.”_

“Nastya, I will shoot you in the goddamned head.”

Incredibly, there’s more applause at that as well as several hoots of laughter at that. You know, in place of what Martin is certain would be the much more reasonable reaction of _concern_ that someone just threatened to murder their violinist. But no, there’s just a beat of silence before the frontman gestures to the band and then-

Oh, and _then._

The music is so loud and fast and erratic that Martin doesn’t catch every word, but he joins the crowd in clapping along with the upbeat shanty. The gist of it, apparently, is that there are ‘tales to be told.’

“Killers and renegades, liars and thieves; welcome! We are The Mechanisms, a band of immortal space pirates, roaming through the universe on our starship, Aurora!”

Martin listens, enraptured, as the man with the microphone introduces the people onstage, each of them with a fantastic name and title. The realization of what he’s witnessing dawns on him slowly, but with such delight that Martin is laughing breathlessly by the time the man introduces himself.

“And last, but certainly not least,” the man says with a cocksure bow and a smirk. “Myself, Jonny d’Ville, your most a- _humble_ captain.”

“First mate!” comes the cry from the other crew members, as well as half the audience, and Jonny curses them out with every name under the sun. 

Later, Martin tries to give Zed back their pins, only to be waved off with a smile. Later, he wakes up on Van’s sofa, wearing Terri’s Mechanisms t-shirt and little else. Much later than that, Martin hides in his room, headphones in his ears as he devours the band’s newest album. Later, his thumb brushes across the surface of the enamel heart pin in time to the beat of _Cinder’s Song_ , and he cries over lost love that was never meant to be.

For now though, Jonny d’Ville flips them all the bird, someone pushes a drink into Martin’s hand, and he’s lost in the cosmos.

* * *

Martin doesn’t know why he dreamed of that night in Oxford. The only thing it has in common with his Getting Over Jon party is waking up on a sofa with a killer hangover. At least, he _hopes_ that’s all. If he wakes up and finds out he’s hooked up with Tim or that Sasha dyed his hair black, he’ll be pretty cross with himself. Maybe it’s his brain trying to comfort him, in its own way. It makes sense, right? Chase down a terrible experience with the sweet memory of the best night of his life. It might even be a sweet coincidence if he didn’t currently feel like a metric tonne of shit. 

“Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty!” Sasha’s voice comes crashing down around his ears and Martin nearly vomits from how badly his head hurts. 

“Sasha, stooooop,” he moans, pulling a blanket up to cover his face. “M’dead. Let me be dead in peace.”

From somewhere nearby, he hears Tim make a noise that sounds like either agreement or indigestion. Both, most likely. He drank even more than Martin did. _God,_ Martin really hopes he didn’t sleep with him. 

Unfortunately, Sasha isn’t nearly as compassionate to their plight as Martin might hope. She yanks the blanket from Martin’s body, catching underneath him in the process and dumping him onto a lumpy, shaggy rug.

Wait. Sasha doesn’t have a rug under the sofa. “Good morning Tim,” Martin says around a mouthful of the other man’s hair.

Tim groans and shoves Martin off of him. “Christ, Martin. I’m flattered, but Timothy Stoker is _no_ man’s rebound.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Martin sighs as his back finally hits the floor. He blinks up into Sasha’s amused face. His first thought is that she should be blurrier than she is, and he realizes that he fell asleep in his contacts. He winces.

“Good morning,” Sasha says, no-nonsense and bright. “I’m making eggs and sausage. Kettle’s on, I have your usual teas, and you can make your own toast because I refuse to burn perfectly good bread the way you two sods do. Chop chop!”

There’s a fair amount of grumbling over popping joints and watering eyes, but Tim and Martin somehow shuffle their way into Sasha’s kitchen nook. Glasses of water are already waiting on them, and Martin gulps his down gratefully. The chill of the water wakes him up a little bit more and he clears his throat. “Thanks for letting us crash here, Sasha. I don’t remember any specifics of, uh, how we got here-”

“I do!” Tim pipes up. He’s been similarly restored by the water, already beginning to thrum with his usual energy. “You and I were properly shit-faced, Martin. I tried to carry you back here from the pub.”

Martin gives a disbelieving laugh as Sasha arrives at the table bearing plates. “Tried to?” he echoes. “What happened?”

“Not that, obviously,” Sasha says with a roll of her eyes. “He tripped and started whining that he’d broken his leg, which he _hadn’t,_ so I ended up carrying _him.”_

Tim scratches the back of his neck sheepishly. “Oh, come on. I don’t remember _that_ happening. You’re messing with us, right?”

“Wish I was,” Sasha shrugs. “We got here in the end, though. That’s what matters, and that’s also why I was the designated sober person. Eat your eggs before they get cold.”

Properly chastised, Martin tucks in. The food does him good, kickstarting his body and waving away the last of the fog clouding his mind. Bits and pieces of the night before come back to him which he’d actually rather have left forgotten. 

“Oh my God,” he mumbles. “I’m going to have to go back to the pub and apologize to that woman, aren’t I?”

Tim cocks his head to one side. “Do you mean the one who you bumped into and spilled your beer on, or the server who you ended up crying to for ten minutes? Because I don’t think either of them would welcome you back with open arms, if you catch my drift.”

Sasha intercedes before Martin can start to panic over it. “You already did,” she assures him. “And then I did, too, because neither of them could really understand you. I told them that the guy you liked had been a real dickhead toward you and they accepted it, said they’d been there and done that and wished you the best in forgetting about him.”

“Oh yeah, that’s why we got drunk in the first place!” Tim exclaims, as if he’d forgotten. “So Mart-o, did it work? Have we gotten over our boy Jack?”

Martin smiles at his plate in spite of himself, chuckling at the coincidence between Tim’s choice of words and his dream. He’ll absolutely have to relisten to that album later; it always makes him feel better. “Yeah,” he says confidently. “I don’t need that kind of energy in my life, anyway.”

“Correct!” Tim points his fork at Martin sternly. “You are a goddamn delight, and if he doesn’t appreciate that then he doesn’t _deserve_ your company. And if he pulls anything again, I’ll knock his lights out!”

“Tim, you can't go getting yourself fired,” Martin scolds him, but he can’t keep a straight face. It’s probably petty to delight in the idea of his friend defending his honor, but he’s had a bad week so he lets himself indulge in the fantasy. 

Sasha scoffs. “Fired? Please. If Elias hasn’t fired Tim by now, it’s never going to happen. He could get away with murdering someone in the archives, let alone punching an arsehole in the office.”

“That’s me; the untouchable- unless you ask very nicely- Tim Stoker!”

Martin shoves his plate away, feeling green around the gills. He loves Tim, he really does, but he really doesn’t need any more of his hypersexual humor while he’s processing… whatever the hell this is. “He said he’s okay with pretending none of this ever happened, so that’s what we should do. Can we at least agree on that?”

“Fine,” Sasha concedes, stealing a sausage from his plate and shoving it in her mouth whole. “But if he tries anything else, I’m cutting off his-“

“Sausage?”

“ _Tim!”_ Martin and Sasha groan in unison. 

Tim laughs and shoots finger guns at them. “Sorry, sorry, couldn’t resist. And if I can’t even punch the bastard, you can’t castrate him. It’s equality, Sasha!”

Martin shakes his head fondly and takes back his plate. Tim and Sasha really are great friends. They’ve proven it more than enough times, but he doesn’t think he’ll ever stop feeling stupidly lucky to have them in his corner. 

He isn’t very hungry anymore, but he knows enough that he really should eat, so he does. He’s only taken a few more bites when, suddenly, his phone starts buzzing in his pocket. He pulls it out, looks at the caller ID, and chokes on his eggs. 

Tim thumps him hard on the back, looking alarmed. “Alright, Martin?”

He shakes his head frantically, still hacking, and throws the phone to Sasha. She blanches at it, but hits the green accept button and raises the phone to her ear anyway. “... Good morning, Elias. Did you need to talk to Martin?”

Martin gestures wildly with his hands, still trying to get his breathing right. Sasha throws her free hand up in the air, as if to ask “What am I supposed to make of that?” Eventually, she lowers the phone and turns on the speaker so they can all hear. 

“- fast, I was hoping he would be willing to come and meet with me this afternoon. It’s nothing all that serious, Martin, please don’t misunderstand. I just need to do some follow up on some recent developments,” Elias’s voice says, and Martin doesn’t have time to wonder how Elias knew he could hear him now. He’s too busy panicking that it actually is serious and that he’s going to get fired. 

Finally, he manages to swallow the lump of food lodged in his windpipe. “Recent developments?” he repeats. “Nothing serious?”

“Yes, exactly! In fact, Tim is welcome to join you if he chooses. I could use both of your input, and of course you will be paid your standard wages for your time.”

Tim pulls a face and shakes his head. Martin wholeheartedly sympathizes. He opens his mouth to tell Elias that it’s too short notice. 

“Ah, just you then Martin? That’s completely understandable. Take care not to be late, as I’m sure this will be quite the opportunity for you and I don’t want you to miss a minute of it. I’ll see you in two hours.” The line cuts off, leaving Martin gaping at his phone. 

“Rotten luck,” Sasha says with a click of her tongue. “Well, you’re welcome to the shower as always, Martin. Tim, go back to sleep. You look like shit.”

“So we’re just going to ignore all that?” Tim exclaims. “That was _really fucking creepy,_ Sasha!”

Sasha snorts. “It’s Elias. When has he _not_ been creepy?”

Which… well. That’s a really fair point, actually. He just wishes it wasn’t. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon needs help being human (but not in the way you’d think. Not yet)

Georgie’s eyebrows climbed into her hairline ten minutes ago. They haven’t come down even though Jon hasn’t spoken for five. The Admiral, laid in a proprietary curve around Jon’s hand, nips at the residue of lunch on his fingertips and purrs without a care in the world. Not for the first or last time, Jon envies him. 

“Um, Georgie? Are you going to say anything?” Jon asks, nearly pleading. 

“Jonathan Elizabeth Sims,” Georgie finally says. “After all of the trouble you went to… You are the world’s biggest idiot.”

Jon opens his mouth to argue, but he can’t. At the moment, her statement feels like the gospel truth. “I am,” he agrees instead. “Now what do I _do_ about it? I thought- we took _so_ many precautions going into this.” He’d been so careful with the wording on his resume, scrubbed the internet as clean as possible of any connection between Jonny d’Ville and Jonathan Sims, and even gone so far as to create an entirely new Facebook account. With Georgie’s help, of course. Aside from his grandmother, she’s the only one who’s known him long enough to provide any _normal_ photos from his youth. 

“That we did,” Georgie nods. “And yet, you still happened to choose just the right boring, academic job to land in the lap of your musical storytelling cabaret’s biggest fan.”

Wincing, Jon shoots her a pained look. “ _Please_ don’t say it like that. Ma- he isn’t- I did not _land in his lap,_ Georgie!”

Georgie lets herself fall back against the arm of the sofa, throwing her legs up into Jon’s lap to join the Admiral. “Okay, I digress. But you _did_ make an arse of yourself to him.”

“ _I_ made-? Georgie, I just gave you a week’s worth of harassment complaints!”

She fixes him with an extremely unimpressed gaze. “No. What you did was tell me all about how your coworkers tried to make friends with you and then how you went berserker on them over a nickname.”

“But Martin was so… Georgie, you didn’t see the way he _looked_ at me! It made my skin crawl.” Jon shudders from the mere memory of it. He hadn’t understood it at first- he didn’t know the soft, sweet-looking researcher from Adam, so why did Martin’s eyes light up like that when he looked at Jon? Why did his voice quiver? Why were his hands, when he finally stood up to shake Jon’s, coated in sweat?

He understood _quite_ well as soon Martin leapt to his feet, the fabric of his flannel shifting and revealing the design on his black t-shirt. It wasn’t from the _very_ first batch of merchandise the Mechs put out, but it might as well have been. Jon still has one himself, tucked away in storage somewhere for nostalgia’s sake; the starship-and-gear logo was a labor of love, and he’s as proud of it as he is the font he chose for the band’s name. To see it paired with those bright, shining eyes gave him a feeling not unlike indigestion.

“So he’s a little bit of a fanboy,” Georgie says. “Big deal. Why not take advantage of it? It can’t be a _bad_ thing to have someone at work who hero-worships you. You already said he offered to make you tea whenever you want, so I’d say the worst he’d do is be overly helpful until the star-shine wears off.”

Jon colors at that, kneading at the Admiral’s soft fur. “I… Really don’t think it’s quite that simple.” He can’t find any words to explain that don’t sound juvenile, conceited, or both, so he doesn’t elaborate.

Georgie has no such qualms. “Oh. He fancies you then, is that it? Or he fancies ‘Jonny d’Ville.’ That’s not so bad…” she trails off, and Jon can practically see the scenarios he described spooling through her mind once again with this new information. She frowns at him, finally pulling out the inevitable disapproval. “Well, he definitely doesn’t fancy you _anymore,_ then. Jon, did you break his heart in the first week of knowing him? That’s frigid, even for you.”

“Hey,” he protests, even though he knows he deserves it. “You broke up with _me,_ remember?”

“Because it was the smart thing to do. Now look at us; I’m here for you when you make a mess of your love life. You can’t even pretend it’s weird, can you?”

Jon sighs. His hand closes around her ankle and squeezes gently. “No. I suppose not.” Then he double takes, spluttering. “This is not about my _love life,_ Georgie! I could lose my job!”

“For _what?”_ she demands, exasperated. The Admiral perks up at her tone and trots over to her, rubbing his cheeks against her stomach in a silent demand for attention. She gives it, however absentmindedly, as her attention is still on chastising Jon. “I helped you get your ‘professional image’ in order because it’s just a smart thing to do when you’re applying for a real job. Now that you’ve got it, they aren’t going to fire you because you went gallivanting through Oxford for a couple of years swearing and getting grease paint everywhere.”

Jon forces himself to keep his tone even. “You know as well as I do that the Magnus Institute isn’t exactly the most respected place of business in the country. It’s old, yes. Established. But you ought to know more than most that when you’re doing supernatural research, people will use any excuse to paint you as a weirdo or a psychopath. In this job, image is _everything._ One loose word from Martin or Tim to Elias and I won’t be _Jon_ anymore, I’ll be ‘that guy who did a creepy incantation in R'lyehian while scream-singing about a train.’ Does that sound like someone they’d keep on at a place that already struggles to get the public to take them seriously?”

“Depends,” Georgie replies. “Does Elias need any creepy incantations done?”

Jon gives her a _look_ and she sighs. 

“Alright,” she relents. “I see your point. And I know what you have to do.”

“You do?” Jon doesn’t mean to sound so incredulous. He knows exactly how brilliant Georgie is, especially with people. Worlds better than he is, at any rate. “Okay, what is it then?”

“Well first, you’re going to have to apologize. Then, and only then, you can talk to Martin about why you want to keep the Mechs on the down low.”

Apologize? For what? Jon stares at her in bewilderment. He hasn’t don’t anything wrong, has he? “You want me to apologize for telling off my stalker,” he says flatly. “I’ll admit, I really wasn’t expecting that one.”

Georgie rolls her eyes. “Okay, big shot. First off, he’s not stalking you. He’s a Mech Head with a crush at worst, and at best he was just trying to make you feel comfortable in the office. He was worried about you getting along with everyone since you were so much older than the rest of the team.”

Now it’s Jon’s turn to raise his eyebrows. “How is that statement so specific and yet still so inaccurate?”

Wordlessly, Georgie hands him her phone. It’s open to her photo album, and Jon sees a screenshot of a Facebook comment. He frowns. “This is from my profile.”

“Yes,” Georgie agrees. 

“I haven’t seen this,” he continues. “It’s on that picture of me and the Admiral, right?”

“Eeyup,” she says, popping the ‘p’ sharply. “It was deleted less than a minute later, but I figured it would be as soon as I saw it so I caught it while I could. Just read it.”

So Jon does. 

**Martin Blackwood: u don’t look like 38 here m sorry i thot u were old and i liek youre cat please let me know uf he has a littel sailorshat** _Posted now, 1:12 AM_

“Good lord,” Jon grumbles, although he’s quietly impressed. Georgie’s people skills and ability to interpret gibberish are quite uncanny. “You got all of that from this? I doubt he even remembers writing it. He’s not exactly a brilliant filing clerk, but none of his work is nearly this bad.”

“Let’s imagine he does,” Georgie proposes. “That’s probably what he was so adamant about apologizing for. You’re clearly trying to keep your personal life private. Wouldn’t you want to clear your name in person after drawing attention to the private information of someone you admire?”

Yes, Jon has to admit. He would. And it would make a lot more sense than his running theory that Martin was trying to apologize for offending the tea sensibilities of Jonny d’Ville. Jon narrows his eyes at Georgie. “This information would have been helpful last week, I’ll have you know. You didn’t think to tell me that he was trying to apologize for drunk-posting on my photos?”

Georgie’s face is incapable of making a guilty expression. He knows this, has known it for years, but it never fails to irritate him. She simply makes a vague gesture with her hands and goes back to petting the cat. “I was under the assumption that you were capable of managing a workplace dispute on your own without tearing the poor boy’s dreams to shreds. At least now you have something concrete to put in the apology you’re going to give Martin. Again, make sure to do that _before_ you beg him not to spill the Mechs beans. It’ll help build your case.”

Jon groans. “At least I have until Monday to draft a formal apology,” he says grimly. “You know I’m no good at it.”

“Oh, _do_ I.”

Of course, that’s the moment his mobile rings and Elias’s name pops up on the screen. 

“Well shit,” Georgie says helpfully. “I guess if you can’t generate your own remorse, store bought will do.”

Jon curses colorfully before accepting the call. “Good afternoon, Mr. Bouchard.”

“Oh please, Jon. It’s Elias, you know that. I’m sorry to call you on your day off, but would you happen to be free around two? I have a field assignment I’d like to go over with you.”

“A field assignment?” Jon repeats, eyes wide. Georgie gives a faux shocked look before rolling her eyes and gesturing that she’s going to the kitchen. Jon gives her a grateful wave and promises himself that he’ll apologize for being so rude as soon as he hangs up. “M- er, Elias, I thought that Ms. Robinson’s assistants were the only ones who took those on.”

There’s the sound of papers shuffling and Elias sighs. “Yes, that is typically the case. However, Gertrude and the archives staff are currently researching abroad and therefore unavailable. I’m sorry Jon, I _know_ this is very last minute and a lot to ask of you, but from what I’ve seen of your work I believe you would be the best person for this assignment. Would you mind meeting in my office today at two so I can give you the briefing?”

A swell of pride breaks through the wall of shock and settles warmly in Jon’s chest. He… well, he knows he’s been working hard; _obviously_ he’s been working hard. He hasn’t had anything to do at the Institute except work and avoid his coworkers, which thankfully go hand in hand. But, well, he hadn’t heard anything from Elias at all until last night. He’d wondered if his new boss even noticed. 

Apparently, he had. “Of- of course!” Jon says breathlessly. “I’ll be there. I- _thank_ you, Elias. I won’t let you down.”

“Oh no, Jon. Thank _you._ I’m looking forward to your future performance. See you at two.”

Jon says goodbye and ends the call, letting his arm dangle limply at his side. “Thank heaven,” he mutters to himself. “Finally, some good news.” Then he blinks, pressing the button to bring up the phone’s clock. Five after one. _Shit._

“Georgie, I have to go!”

“What?” Georgie calls from the kitchen. “You just got here! Is something wrong?”

“I have to get to the Institute!” Jon jumps to his feet. “Oh, Admiral, apologies- Elias is giving me an assignment, an actual field assignment Georgie! I have to be there in half an hour and _where did I put my jacket?”_

It flies over the back of the couch ahead of Georgie as she re-enters the living room, and Jon catches it on reflex. “Left it on the back of the chair,” Georgie informs him. “Half an hour? That’s awfully short notice. Or- wait. You’re doing that thing where you think you have to show up twenty minutes early to everything, aren’t you? Because Jon, when someone calls you out of the blue like that I _promise_ you are allowed to just be on time.”

Jon already has his jacket on. He shakes his head as he toes on his shoes by the door. “But this is such a huge thing! Out of all of the researchers at the Institute, Elias called _me._ I’ve only been there for a week and I’m already getting assigned to field work! You can’t tell me you’re not at least excited to hear what it’s all about?”

Georgie picks up the Admiral, who took refuge on the back of the sofa during Jon’s flight, and walks him over to the door to say goodbye. “Fine, you’ve got me. I’ll tell you upfront though- if you _do_ find any spooks, you’re legally required as my friend to give me every scrap of information you have for the podcast.”

“Right, of course.” Jon smiles and pets the Admiral’s head one more time in parting. “Thank you again, Georgie. Really, I owe you.”

Her eyes soften. “Hey, it all comes out in the wash. Someone’s got to remind you how to exist in a society with people, right? Might as well be me. Now what are you going to do immediately after this meeting?”

“Work on an apology, practice it, and deliver it. And then… _talk_ to Martin,” Jon lists dutifully, although he can’t help his lip from curling. “Honestly. The things I do maintain my professional demeanor.”

Georgie raises her eyebrow and plucks a few stray cat hairs from Jon’s shoulder. “Right. Professional.”

A laugh bubbles up in Jon’s throat, although by the times it makes its way out it’s little more than a puff of hot air. All over again, he’s overcome with thankfulness that Georgie is still in his life. If he’s managed to keep their friendship going in spite of the many, _many_ disparities in his social skills, he can do just about anything. 

Surely, he thinks as he says his goodbyes and all but runs down the stairs of Georgie’s flat. Surely he can handle one field assignment and one apology. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHY DID THE NEW EPISODE NERF THE ENTIRE PREMISE OF THIS FIC??? MY CROPS ARE DYING
> 
> Jk but it is weird writing this knowing that the archives staff were actually really close and that Jon apparently LIED ABOUT HIS AGE BY A DECADE AND NO ONE NOTICED UNTIL 2015???!!!! Oh well, this was an au anyway, and it’s shall continue to be one


	5. Chapter 5

Martin knows he has plenty of time to actually _get_ to the Institute; even in London, it doesn’t take two hours to get through two stops on the tube. But Sasha lives closer, and if he tries to get home, shower, change clothes, and _then_ meet Elias by two? He’ll be late for sure. In trouble or not, he can’t risk that. 

“I’m going to take you up on that shower,” Martin tells Sasha. “But hey, leave the dishes for me? It’s the least I can do after imposing on you so much.”

Sasha’s already shaking her head before Martin can get the words out. “Go on, you’ve got enough on your plate. I’ll just make Tim do them.”

“Hey! Don’t go volunteering me for things!” Tim demands around a mouthful of toast. “I’m not the one who got called to the bloody principal’s office.”

“And I know you’d rather get some fresh clothes, but you should probably just throw those in the wash,” Sasha finishes loudly over Tim’s whining. “If you’re okay waiting for it to be done, that is.”

Martin gulps down the last of his water and stands, taking his dishes to the sink, at least. “Sasha, have I ever told you that you’re the best?”

“Sure, she’s just a saint! Who ever heard of making the hungover guy do the dishes?” Tim’s grumbling follows him all the way to the bathroom, accompanied by Sasha’s reply of “maybe the woman who made breakfast for the hungover guy?”

He shakes his head fondly and opens the door to the small closet where Sasha keeps her stacked washer and dryer. He strips down behind the door and throws his clothes into the washer with a splash of liquid detergent, grabbing a towel from the neat stack once the machine is going. He wraps it loosely around his waist and hurries across the hall to the safety of the bathroom.

While he waits for the water to heat up, Martin examines his face in the mirror over the sink. He doesn’t _look_ hungover, thank god. A little tired, maybe, and his eyes are definitely a little bit red. Although that could just be because he _really_ needs to take his contacts out. They’re disposable, so he tosses them in the bin. Fuck it, he can be a little bit blind for the rest of the day. 

Once he sees steam, he get in the shower and spends the first blissful minute letting the hot water hit him square in the face and wash away the sweat and grime that only really comes from sleeping with your face squished against a couch cushion.

Sasha’s shower is worlds better than the clanking old thing in his flat, and so Martin takes his time. Whereas his own shower head can never seem to get enough water pressure behind it, when Martin turns the nozzle all the way to the right the water hits him so hard it almost hurts. He turns around and groans happily at the soothing pressure on his tense shoulders. 

“It’s fine,” he tells the shampoo bottle. “It’s- this is a _good_ thing. Elias wants your input on something. Maybe we’re getting a new computer system! Or, wait; he’d ask Sasha about that, not me. Maybe… maybe I’m moving departments. That’s not ideal, but at least I wouldn’t have to run into…”

The bottle slips through his fingers and clatters to the tile. Martin stares at its blurry form and doesn’t move to grab it. 

The thought of moving departments should be exciting, shouldn’t it? He’s a terrible researcher, and everyone knows it. J- _people_ have been quite vocal about it, actually. But, but Elias _said!_ He said there wasn’t any trouble! Just recent developments.

 _Recent developments_ , sure. Developments like fights in the office. Developments like lying to your boss’s face about spiders to get out of the fight. Like your boss _knowing_ you lied to his face, leading him to wonder what _else_ you could have been lying about, and so he double checked your CV and decided to follow up on it and-

No, just… no. Martin breathes slowly through his nose and leans down to pick up the bottle. He’s already decided not to get anxious about this until he needs to. Just because he’s alone with his thoughts for the first time since Thursday night is no excuse to start manufacturing the worst case scenario. He’ll deal with it when it comes. 

Martin finishes showering quickly after making his decision. He dries off, combs his hair down, and Wrapping the towel around his waist, he pokes his head out the door. “Sasha!” he calls. “Do you have a robe or something I could wear while my clothes dry? I didn’t think this through very well.”

“Sorry!” comes the response from the living room, garbled through laughter. “My bag of tricks only holds so many conveniences, and a size large dressing gown isn’t one of them. You're Towel Man until the clothes are done, I’m afraid.”

Martin sighs. Well, it’s his own fault for not being more prepared. At least he’ll have clean clothes at his meeting. “Alright then, I’m coming out. Tim, no peeking!”

He finds the two of them on the sofa, Tim’s head in Sasha’s lap as they sit in repose and watch telly. Tim slaps a hand over his eyes and waves with the other. “I noticed you didn’t tell Sasha not to peek, you know,” he complains. “Just because I don’t want to be your rebound hookup doesn’t mean I don’t want to look at your incredibly attractive body, Martin.”

Sasha rolls her eyes. “Honestly, you two are terrible. If I didn’t think it would burn London to the ground, I’d suggest you date just to contain all of this frisky energy.”

“Frisky! Is that what we’re calling it now?” Martin laughs. He sits in the armchair tucked into the corner and pulls the duvet he slept with around his bare shoulders. “Alright Tim, friskiness levels are manageable now. You can look.”

Tim uncovers his eyes to give Martin a wounded look. “Why do I feel like you two are using ‘frisky’ as a placeholder for ‘slutty’? Just because I don’t allow myself to be _trapped_ by attraction to only one gender does not mean I throw myself at every attractive person I meet!”

“Of course not,” Sasha soothes him. “Just at every attractive person you work with.”

Martin chuckles as he watches Tim’s lips flap noiselessly. Even he apparently can’t bullshit himself out of that one. He ends up throwing his arm back over his eyes and using his free hand to flip them both the bird. “Unfair, bringing up our ill-advised hookup. That’s a two-way street, you know.”

“And yet I haven’t slept with Sasha,” Martin muses, barely holding back a smile as he tries his best to look serious. He wouldn’t be teasing Tim about this in the first place if he didn’t know he could take it. 

Sasha nods her agreement, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. “And I haven’t slept with Martin _or_ Rosie. Looks like this is less of a two-way street and more of a traffic circle; it keeps coming back around to you, Mr. Stoker.”

“Kindly get stuffed, Ms. James.”

“Already? Thought we were still in the turbulent stage of season two, awaiting the season four reconciliation?” 

“That’s right! Stay tuned for the season finale folks, when- what’s this? It’s really been Sasha’s twin sister all along!” 

Sasha gasps dramatically. “But if _I’m_ me and _she’s_ me, then who’s flying this plane?!”

Mercifully, the timer on the clothes beeps and Martin escapes to put them in the dryer, laughing all the way as Tim makes exaggerated snatches at the trailing corners of the duvet.

An hour later, he walks up the steps to the Magnus Institute and he is no longer laughing. The building itself has never given off a super welcoming vibe, but on an overcast day like this it looks downright foreboding. He wipes his shoes on the mat out front before slipping inside, taking a moment to glance around before he heads upstairs. He’s never been here on a Saturday before, and while their jobs aren’t especially lively it’s odd to hear the Institute completely silent and empty.

 _Spooky,_ his mind supplies. He’s inclined to agree.

He pulls his phone out of his pocket and checks the time as he heads up the stairs; he’s five minutes early, which is really nothing short of a miracle when it comes to his ability to get to places on time these days. He figures he’ll hang out on the bench outside Elias’s office for about three more minutes before knocking, not wanting to be rude by being too early and interrupting something. 

Of course, that plan dissolves the moment he opens the door onto the landing. Directly to his right is the dark wooden door of Elias’s office, and directly to the left of _that_ sits none other than Jon, who startles at the sound of the door opening. 

“What are you doing here?” they demand in unison, matching each other’s wary tone with no effort. Martin winces at his own volume and watches Elias’s door, but doesn’t hear their boss move or say anything so he simply lowers his voice. “I’m here because Elias called me in,” he informs Jon, crossing his arms over his chest. “What about you?”

“The same reason,” Jon replies, looking faintly ill. 

Martin carefully closes the stairwell door behind him as quietly as he can before facing Jon again, his heart pounding. If Elias called Jon in as well, then the recent developments are almost certainly _not_ about Martin’s CV, which is a good thing. But it also means that this is definitely pertaining to last night’s altercation, so they could both be in hot water. 

He looks at Jon, who is a complete arse but who works harder than anyone he’s ever met. Jon who is currently wringing his hands so hard that Martin’s own knuckles twinge in sympathy. Jon who only started this job a week ago, and who, as rude as he is, doesn't deserve to get in trouble with their boss just because Martin got his feelings hurt. He’s an adult. He can handle this.

Martin sighs and lowers his arms. He slowly walks over to the bench and sits down on the opposite end from Jon, who goes stiff as a board and scoots as far away as possible. Martin tracks the swirling carpet pattern under his shoes to avoid looking at him. 

“Look, Jon… athan. I don’t know what’s going to happen here, but I should apologize before it does. I shouldn’t have assumed you wanted or needed my help or my- my-” _One sided crush? Mother henning? Overenthusiastic friends? Tea?_ Martin coughs. “Well, you know. I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable, and I’m not going to bother you about it anymore. I hope we can still work alright together, though. As, um. The youngest in the office. We ought to stick together, right?”

As he speaks, he feels more than sees Jon continue to tense up. His shoulders climb so high that they almost surpass his ears, which shouldn’t even be possible. Martin hears his breath, quick and shallow, and finally risks a peek and sees Jon looking absolutely furious, all red-faced and shaking. 

“Alright?” Martin asks, bewildered enough that he forgets that he’s supposed to be avoiding nicknames. 

Jon jumps at the sound of his voice, leaping to his feet with righteous indignation and struggling for words. “I- no I’m not _alright,_ you can’t just- you weren’t supposed to be here! I wasn’t supposed to see you yet and there you go _apologizing_!”

Martin… Martin goes cold with horror and revulsion, even as his body stands on its own to face Jon. He recalls Jon just last night telling Martin in no uncertain terms to cease all interaction forthwith. Which, he supposes that he hasn’t done that, but it’s not his fault that Elias called them both in! And does Jon really expect them to work in the same department without ever _speaking_ to one another? What kind of person won’t accept or even _tolerate_ an sincere apology out of sheer stubbornness?

“I- you know what? Fine. Apology rescinded. Is that better, _Jonathan?”_ Martin sneers, just avoiding rolling his eyes. He forces himself to ignore the hurt, confused look that crosses Jon’s face. Serves him right- Martin’s nice, but he isn’t a doormat. He’s allowed to hit back, so he does. “Is that more _acceptable_ behavior from a grownup, to squabble about it and act like children just because we’re upset? I was _trying_ to be civil, but if you want to be such a dick about it then two can play that game. God, I cannot believe I even _considered_ -!”

“Ahem,” Elias coughs.

Martin and Jon both freeze, eyes darting to their boss in panic. Elias stands in the open doorway of his office, checking a pocket watch. “Apologies for making you wait, gentlemen, but my last call ran long. Shall we talk, or do you need a moment to wrap things up here?”

“Wrap up?” Martin squeaks. “Wrap what up? Nothing here to wrap up. Right, Jonathan?”

Elias raises an eyebrow and wordlessly turns the same look onto Jon. Martin doesn’t dare breathe.

Jon shakes himself, pulling his jacket straight and nodding. “Quite right... Martin.”

Martin has to hold back a smirk; he at least has the upper hand in dialing back the pleasantries, since Jon never afforded him any to begin with.

Pocketing his watch with a nod, Elias gestures them inside expectantly. For once, Martin doesn’t step back or wait for Jon to go first. He enters right behind Elias without even glancing at his coworker.

Martin has only been in the director’s office a handful of times, which is perfectly fine with him. It’s all very posh and suitably spooky, supposedly housing the same desk and decor of the Institute’s founder, Jonah Magnus. There’s a portrait of the man himself on the wall, and Martin swears that Jonah’s eyes rest on him no matter where he moves in the admittedly small space. He fixes his gaze instead to the opposite wall, which holds a slightly less upsetting bronze plaque depicting a stylized owl’s head as well as the Institute’s motto: _Audio. Vigilo. Opperior._

Elias rounds his desk and gestures for the two of them to sit, having pulled two plush armchairs to the other side. Martin takes the seat farthest from the portrait, feeling only a little bit petty about it when Jon takes his seat with a wince.

“So,” Elias says. “It has occurred to me that I may have explained slightly more about this proposal to you, Jon, than I have to Martin, so forgive me for taking the time to repeat myself.” 

“Not at all,” Jon says stiffly. Martin doesn’t care how uncomfortable he sounds. He _doesn’t._ Jon will just have to deal for a minute and be considerate of others.

“I’ll try to keep it brief for now, as you’ll find more information in the files I have here if you accept this assignment.” Elias pats an accordion folder sitting to one side of his desk, and Martin eyes it. It seems awfully full. Then again, if this is an _assignment_ then he probably shouldn’t be surprised. 

He’s absolutely surprised. No one in the research department has done anything like this, at least not as an initial investigation. Follow ups, sure. Underqualified as he is, even Martin gets trusted with _follow ups._ But a full blown paranormal investigation? And what, is Elias saying that he and Jon are going ghost hunting? This is so far from the tongue lashing he thought he’d be getting that a relieved smile splits his face without his permission.

Elias chuckles and shakes his head like he can see Martin’s thoughts scrolling across the bottom of his television screen. “I can see you getting excited, Martin, but I’m sorry to say that this won’t likely be terribly exciting. There’s been a series of odd, possibly paranormal occurrences at a jeweler’s on Mare Street. I promised that I would have someone out on Monday and normally, I would send Gertrude or her assistants to handle this type of sighting. Unfortunately, the archival team had a rather urgent and last minute task abroad and I need a backup team to investigate- with overtime pay, of course, I’m well aware that this isn’t typically your job. That’s all of the pertinent information, I suppose. Do you have any questions?”

Martin nods slowly, turning this new information over in his head. Mare Street- that’s Hackney, he thinks. It isn’t far, though he can’t think of the route there off the top of his head. If they’re doing an investigation it could take the better part of a day, but at least it’ll be a short trip back home. 

Wait- what is he even thinking? He can’t go on a work trip with _Jon._ How are they supposed to investigate anything if they can’t even talk to one another? He’ll just have to explain to Elias, very rationally, that two of the researchers he hired to an academic institution need to go to separate time-out corners. Easy. He can just say no, and throw away the best opportunity he’s gotten to prove himself since he got here, because of Jonathan _fucking_ Sims.

“Monday, you said?” Martin asks. “I suppose we’d just need their hours, er, the address, of course, so we know what station to get off at, that sort of thing.”

“All in here,” Elias replies, once again indicating the folder. His green eyes flash. “You accept, then? Lovely. The two of you really are doing me a great favor, you know. And if this goes well, I would go so far as to say it will _vastly_ improve interdepartmental relations.”

Martin’s face burns. It’s bad enough that he’d almost forgotten Jon was even sitting next to him- the man hadn’t said a work through the whole proposal, which strikes Martin as supremely odd considering how thorough Jon likes to be when it comes to work- but the fact that Elias is viewing this as, as some sort of _team building exercise_ is nothing short of a nightmare. 

Jon clears his throat, straight-backed and just as red as Martin. His voice comes out sounding rusty and unused. “Mr. Bouchard-”

“Elias,” he corrects with a smile. 

“ _Elias,”_ Jon says imploringly. “There isn’t- everything is fine between, that is, concerning the two of us.”

“Excellent! I’ll leave it to my two top researchers, then.” Elias claps his hands with finality. “I won’t have you waste more of your weekend here, so I want you to go home, read up, and be ready to ship out Monday morning. Oh, and do remember to save your receipts gentlemen. Wouldn’t want to miss out on company reimbursement now, would you?”

No point to it, Martin sulks privately. It’s not like the tenner it’ll take to get them up the Victoria line will cover the bill for the therapy they'll both need after this. Therapy, or bail money.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know it's been a hot minute, but it's back! The past week or so has been... rough, mentally and emotionally speaking. I'm sure a lot of y'all are in the same boat there. I'm going to get around to replying individually to all of the lovely comments people left but I want to thank all of you so much. As much as I'm enjoying writing this, it takes as much energy as anything else and with the world upside down, a lot of my energy is misplaced. I just want you to know that every single time I got a comment, I opened up the document and worked on something, even if it was just to smooth out a piece of writing I wasn't happy with yet. You are the reason I'm still writing instead of just wallowing around feeling Capital L Lonely. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy <3


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon makes progress

**Chapter 6**

Hell is much quieter than Jon expected it to be, the only sound being the whirring of his laptop fan and the slow tick of the clock on his nightstand. But it’s hell all the same, his dry eyes staring at the shaft of sunlight that continues to crawl up the faded wallpaper of his bedroom wall and doing nothing to slow its progress. 

To think he’d been ecstatic about this assignment not two days before is laughable. He’s spent the night hunched over his computer, doing as much research as he can in an effort to gain even a modicum of control over this terrible situation. All he’s gleaned is a few ghost stories and his own tendency to get engrossed in the production process of flashy custom jewelry. 

Jon groans and slams the laptop shut, falling limply back onto his pillows with his shower-damp hair fanned out on his pillow. In ten minutes, he’ll start getting dressed. Then he’ll make the walk to the station, meet Martin inside, and together they’ll go off on their little work trip. On paper, it all sounds so simple. So straightforward. 

In real life, he picks up his phone and pulls up the terrible, slapdash text of his notes. Okay, so maybe this was the main thing he stayed up all night working on, not that he has anything to show for it.

_ Martin, _

_ I can understand that you were upset by my words and actions. Please know that it was not my intention to cause you distress or insult you in any way. I am only worried that you are looking at a person who doesn’t exist anymore. I need to leave that part of my life behind me in order to succeed in this job. I hope you can understand that and that we can carry on as normal. _

It’s shit, complete and utter shit. Georgie would probably say that she’s proud he was able to somewhat put his feelings down, and then immediately clobber him for failing to squeeze even one weak “sorry” into the entire apology. But he just doesn’t know what else to say that doesn’t sound completely juvenile, or worse- like he’s somehow in the wrong here. 

He’s not  _ entirely _ in the wrong, is the thing. He’s sure of it. Martin has done nothing but follow him around and make him uncomfortable for a week, and Jon has done nothing but react with a completely understandable level of indignation. 

The thing is? Martin didn’t react to him as Jon expected. Martin clearly mistook his frustration at being caught unprepared for anger. The hurt and frustration in Martin was so evident that even Jon got the message loud and clear- he’s messed up. After Martin’s outburst, it certainly feels like he should apologize for that. He probably missed his chance of doing it right when Martin left the Institute before him, fuming and silent.

… he really should just swallow his pride and ask Georgie for help. But he’s already dug the hole this deep, and she’s already given him all the advice she can. If he can just manage to make nice with Martin on his own, they could both benefit greatly from this little misadventure. Martin certainly isn’t going to be sent on any more assignments as important as this one unless he really impresses Elias. Neither of them will.

Well, words clearly aren’t going to get him out of this. Every time he opens his mouth around Martin simply makes things worse. So what can Jon do to  _ show  _ Martin his intentions to make amends? What do coworkers-at-odds do to resolve conflict in an office setting? His instinct is to offer to make him some tea, but after their first conversation, tea is definitely off the table. Unless he actually makes it with a kettle instead of microwaving the water? That could work- it would show Martin that Jon listened to his critiques and took them to heart. The wrench in that particular set of gears is that they won’t see each other in the office today, so there’s no way to enact his plan in time for the trip.

The timer he set on his phone chimes. Jon winces and jumps to his feet, rummaging through his closet for a fresh shirt and getting dressed on autopilot. He fastens the last button on his shirt and lets his arms fall limply to his sides. He’s about to investigate a paranormal sighting on no sleep, very little useful information, and with a partner who probably won’t even want to look at him. 

He resolves to grab drinks on the way to the station and stuffs his wallet and keys into his laptop bag. There’s a niggling feeling at the back of his mind, like he’s forgetting something, but he elects to ignore it and walks out the door. 

Sunlight filters weakly through the morning clouds, even that dim light aggravating Jon’s steadily building headache. He remembers at least one sort-of-nice cafe between his flat and Pimlico station, so when he passes by he ducks inside to grab a drink. 

There’s only one person in line ahead of Jon, leaving him only a few seconds to decide what he wants. He knows he’s getting himself coffee, hot and black. But what should he get as a peace offering for Martin? He doesn’t even know if he drinks coffee, and he’s never tried this place’s tea. 

“Thank you, have a great day!” The barista rings up the customer ahead of Jon and then it’s his turn to step up to the counter. 

With the practiced ease of a socialite, the barista takes one look at Jon’s wincing, nervous face and shifts her entire demeanor. “Morning,” she says softly. “What can I get you?”

Jon finds himself smiling in relief, grateful not to have to navigate any small talk. “One large black coffee, please. And… I’m sorry, can I ask, how is your chai?”

The barista- and Christ, Jon. She has a name tag, her name is Deliah- shrugs. “I don’t drink chai personally, but my tea snob friends all like it when they come in.”

“Perfect,” Jon replies. “I have just the tea snob for it. Large, please.”

Deliah tells him his total and chuckles as she types in his order. “Friend of yours, I take it?”

Jon tries to keep his expression neutral as he pulls out his wallet and counts out the bills. “That’s the plan.”

She studies him for a second before nodding slowly. “Jay,” she calls. “Switch with me for a second and let me make this one.”

“Jay” raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say a word, stepping forward to take Deliah’s place when she spins toward the various machines at her disposal. Jon hands them the money and tries not to stammer. “Keep the change.”

“Cheers,” Jay acknowledges. “Next in line, please?”

Jon steps aside to let the next young woman come forward. He waits at the counter, curiously watching Deliah work. He understands little about coffee brewing and far less about tea making, but it’s a soothing process to watch. Deliah turns knobs and pulls levers on the machines that Jon doesn’t even know the name of with an ease that speaks to years of experience. 

He recalls Martin’s indignation that Jon boils his tea water in the microwave. He hadn’t put any stock in it at the time, but watching Deliah forces Jon to consider that there's genuine artistry to the thing. Perhaps he shouldn’t dismiss it so easily...

“Here you are.” Deliah sets the two cups on the counter and tips him a wink. “I made that chai special, just the way the elitists like it. Better get this to your new friend before it gets cold, yeah?”

Jon thanks her sincerely, and then checks his watch to see that he’s going to have to run to be on time. He scurries out of the shop with a cup in each hand, walking as quickly as he can without running into anyone. There’s another promise for the running tally in his brain; thank Deliah from Canyon Cafe if he ever makes it back there again.

He makes it to Pimlico station five minutes before the train is due to leave. People stream into the underground on their way to work, but Jon stands back a big to see through the crowd. He and Martin agreed to meet at the entrance so they could find each other easily, but he doesn’t see-

There. Martin is posted up against the metal railing, headphones in his ears and hands in the pockets of his windbreaker. The glasses are a surprise, but Jon does vaguely recall hearing Martin complain about his contacts to Tim. They make Martin look just a little bit older, despite the magnifying effect on his eyes. He scans the faces around him and freezes when he finds Jon’s. 

Jon attempts a smile, but he can tell by Martin’s flat expression that it isn’t good enough. He jogs up to him and holds out the cup of tea instead. “Morning. I brought tea.”

Martin takes one earbud out and looks at Jon like he’s got a third eye poking out of his forehead. “Sorry, what?”

“It’s chai,” Jon barrels on. “You said you liked it when it was done properly. Don’t worry, I didn’t make it.”

“...thanks.” Martin takes the cup from him and pushes off from the railing, his other hand wrapped tight around the strap of his messenger bag. “We should get going. Train’s running on time for once, apparently. Not that we couldn’t catch another in a few minutes, but we might be late, so...” 

Jon nods like a bobblehead. “Right, right. Good.” 

And that’s that. They’ve greeted one another and now they’re on their way with no problems. Jon congratulates himself for passing step one. Now he just has to get through steps two through twenty.

Pimlico to Bethnal Green only takes around twenty minutes on the Tube, but they’ll have to switch lines once they get to Oxford Circus station. Jon debates whether or not he should say this out loud; he’s trying his best to be as unoffensive as possible, and Martin is also an adult who knows how to use public transportation.

Unfortunately, he’s apparently inexperienced enough that he almost walks right into an empty train car.

“Stop!” Jon catches his arm and looks at him with alarm. “What are you doing?”

Martin jerks his arm away and looks between Jon and the car with confusion. “Boarding our train?” he says slowly, like Jon is thick. 

He gestures toward the train. “In an empty car? Look around- the rest are packed. If that train’s empty, there’s a damn good reason for it and I doubt we’d like to find out what it is.”

Concern flashes across Martin’s face. “Jon, that train isn’t empty. There are a dozen people inside.”

Jon looks again, and sees that Martin’s right. Where before he’d seen nobody, he now sees several passengers waiting for the train to depart. There’s an older gentleman reading the newspaper, a woman in workout gear holding grocery bags, and a group of young people in school uniforms on their way to class. And that’s just on first glance- the rest of the compartment is just as packed as the rest. They all look perfectly normal and quite bored, in no way like they’ve suddenly teleported into the Underground.

That’s far beyond a simple trick of the light. Jon shakes his head. He knows that there wasn’t anyone on that train a second ago, and he’s really getting a bad feeling about boarding it. “But they, there wasn’t-”

“ _ Mind the gap. This is Pimlico Station. The next station is Victoria Station. Mind the gap.” _

“Okay,  _ fine.  _ We’ll go to the next one. _ ”  _ Martin grabs Jon’s sleeve and pulls him along to the next available car. They make it inside just as the doors slide closed, drawing irate looks from the other passengers when they have to squeeze in tighter to accommodate two more bodies.

Jon pays them no mind, immediately craning his neck to get a better view through the small window between their compartment and the next. Nothing has changed, and nothing is happening. It’s just… normal. Impossibly so.

Martin pokes him in the arm. It can’t be hard to do, crammed into the train as they are. “Christ, Jon. Are you sleepwalking or something?”

“What?” Jon replies, only half paying attention. He can’t tell from this distance, but the newspaper in the old man’s hands looks off somehow, the format different from what Jon’s used to seeing. Clunkier, clumsier, like something off an old block printing press.

He hears Martin sigh, and his fingers are suddenly colder. Jon blinks and finds Martin holding both of their drinks and looking extremely unamused. “You were about to dump it on the floor,” he says quietly. “Are you  _ sure  _ you’re awake? Maybe you should drink both of these.”

“But-”

“ _ Arriving at Victoria Station.” _

The brakes engage and Jon almost pitches forward, catching himself on an overhead support at the last second. How are they at the next station already? It feels like they just boarded. 

Martin wastes no time. The second a seat opens up, he shepards Jon over to it and pushes him down along with his cup of coffee. He declines taking a seat for himself, opting to stand next to Jon and watch over him to make sure he does as he’s told. “Drink. Now. I’ll talk to you again when you can convince me you’re conscious.”

Jon casts once more look toward the other car, but the old man is gone, taking his newspaper with him. His shoulders slump in defeat. “Alright.” He takes a sip of his coffee. It’s cooled a bit from the trip, but it’s still warm and tastes excellent. And, as much as it pains him to admit, it does make him feel more alive. Strange, he was going just fine with no sleep until just moments ago. Maybe he finally hit the wall.

“ _ Mind the gap. This is Victoria Station. The next station is Green Park Station. Mind the gap.” _

“We’ll have to change trains at Oxford Circus,” Martin tells him, and Jon bristles, because he  _ knows  _ that, thank you- but he drowns a biting retort with another long pull of caffeine and to his surprise, it actually makes his indignation fade enough to speak civilly.

“Right. That’s next after this one?”

Martin nods suspiciously. “Right. You’re back with the living?”

Jon makes a ‘so-so’ motion with his hand. “I didn’t really, er. Sleep. Last night. I was up… researching the case. I thought I was fine, but I think I maybe haven’t eaten either,” he realizes as he says it. Well, there’s what he was forgetting. His soup must still be sitting in the microwave, where he left it at around seven last night.

“Oh, if that’s all.” Martin reaches into his bag and pulls out a protein bar. “Here, eat this. I can’t imagine why you’d pull an all-nighter before an investigation, but food will help you at least act awake.”

Jon blinks at the proffered snack. “Well, I… thank you, Martin.” He takes it and carefully unwraps it, taking a small bite that turns into two more huge bites and finishing it off in what seems like seconds. He only just holds himself back from licking the crumbs from his fingers, hunger emerging like a cartoon villain jumping out from behind a curtain. “God, sorry. I promise I’m not usually this much of a disaster.”

Martin raises an eyebrow and his lips curl at the edges. “Is it too soon to make a joke about that?”

Jon makes a show of thinking it over. “Probably. Maybe if you have some tea you’ll find it in your heart to grant me some more time.”

“Ah, right.” Martin chuckles, a choppy, breathy thing, and takes his first tentative sip of his chai. Jon watches his eyes grow impossibly larger even as the steam lingers on the lenses of his glasses. “Wow. Okay,  _ wow _ . I’ve never gotten chain tea like this before. Where’d you get it?”

“Canyon Cafe, just down from Pimlico,” he answers with a smile. “If Hackney doesn’t end up being haunted, we should check there next. I think Deliah, the woman who made our drinks, may just have a supernatural talent for it.”

“Oh!” Martin says. “I’ve only been there once, with Sasha. I didn’t end up getting anything, but I should have.” He pauses, just a beat too long to be natural, before continuing. “Maybe we could go there sometime. A-All of us, I mean, Tim and Sasha too.”

Success! Jon has, in the span of ten minutes, had no fewer than three positive social interactions with Martin Blackwood. Now he’s even gotten to the point of polite-but-possibly-insincere social invitations. Should he risk running with this momentum and apologizing directly? No, no- he should at least wait for the Oxford Circus transfer. The second leg of the trip will have fewer interruptions. 

On the other hand, his entire planned apology will take maybe twenty seconds to say. Twenty-two if he tacks on a ‘sorry’ at the end. Jon takes a steadying breath. “Martin?”

“Hm?”

“I’d really like to say-“

“ _ Arriving at Oxford Circus Station.” _

“Bollocks,” Jon swears under his breath. He lurches to his feet, garbage crumpled in his hands. “This is our stop.” He glances at the time and winces. “And we’re running late _.” _

Martin downs the rest of his tea and nods, squaring his shoulders toward the train doors. “If we run, we can catch the next train toward Bethnal Green as it’s coming in.”

They both press forward through the tide of commuters, and this time the Underground feels so much more real. Food and drink have given Jon some sorely needed energy, and he puts it to good use quickly weaving in between the crowds of people in the station. Martin follows him, firmly but politely making his way through. 

In a stroke of luck, he and Martin find a bin to toss their cups and make the connection nigh seamlessly, if not a little bit winded for it. 

“Why did I take your word for it that we’re running late?” Martin groans as they both fall into seats, side by side. His face is flushed from running to keep up with Jon. “I didn’t even get to savor that excellent tea! At this rate, we’ll still be a half hour early!”

“Which means we’ll be exactly on time,” Jon insists. “And that we’ll have a moment to get our wits about us before the investigation. We haven’t had a chance to compare notes yet.”

“Is  _ that  _ what you wanted to talk about back on the other train?” Martin asks with a dry laugh. “We have the same notes, don’t we?”

There’s one note on Jon’s phone that is on a different subject altogether, actually. He really wants to pull it out for a guide, but even he knows that reading it like a script doesn’t exactly inspire sincerity. “I’m sure we do, but- no, actually, there was something else I wanted to talk about. Something of a more personal nature.”

Unexpectedly, Martin’s face goes subtly redder. “O-Oh,” he stammers. “That’s, er. Just a second, I guess I’m still a little winded. Not in the best shape, you know?” He babbles as he unzips his windbreaker, shrugging out of it and cramming the whole thing into his bag. 

Jon has only a second to wonder how Martin can possibly fit so much into one bag before his gaze goes back to the man himself and stays there. Underneath the windbreaker, Martin is wearing that same Mechs shirt from the day they met and Jon’s brain goes completely static. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boy howdy I sure do love giving Jon all of the filler chapters. I feel like very little actually happened here for the sheer amount of searching I had to do to try and even visualize how this specific form of public transport works (I’m in Appalachia y’all, we have One Bus Line in my town and I don’t even understand it) but I hope y’all liked it anyway! I hate to cut it short here, but narratively speaking I NEED the next scene to be from Martin’s POV. Told y’all I had plans for the shirt!! Thanks for reaching <3


	7. Chapter 7

Once, when Martin was still in high school, he went seventy hours without sleep on a dare. He was shooting for a hundred, but he ended up falling asleep on the Tube and waking up in Morden hours later. The way that Jon looks right now, shell-shocked and rigid in his uncomfortable seat, is how Martin figures he probably looked to the night watchman who eventually shook him awake and told him to kick rocks. 

He just does _not_ understand this guy at all. He acts off from the first moment he meets Martin, blows up at him a week later, shows up with tea on a Monday morning like nothing’s wrong, and now this- not that Martin can even tell what “this” is. It’s like there’s some secret code, some signal or switch that turns Jon from a normal enough guy into an indignant alien. 

And yet, when the switch isn’t flipped Jon is a decent person to be around. He doesn’t have it in him to lie, bless him, leaving his emotions to run amok on his face. It’s been amusing and actually kind of touching to watch him monitor and counteract his own acidic tendencies, especially when he tried to be so casual about bringing Martin tea. Letting alone that he thought to bring it at all on no sleep and no food, but he actually remembered Martin’s comments on good chai. He’s obviously trying to do better, and Martin can’t possibly fault him for that. 

What he may have to fault him for is staring at Martin like he just proposed they skip the assignment and run off to ride the carousel at London Zoo. It would appear that the switch has once again been flipped, and Martin suddenly has zero ability to predict where this conversation will go. He’d thought- well, don’t get him wrong, he’s still pretty miffed with Jon about how rude he’s been, and whatever budding crush he’d been nurturing was soundly stomped under Jon’s heel that night at the Institute. But Martin is still the romantic he’s always been, so when a handsome man tells him that he wants to talk about things of a _personal nature_ he’s inclined to have some thoughts on the matter.

“Jon?” he prompts after a beat of awkward silence. “You wanted to talk about something?”

The other man jolts like he’s been shocked and immediately turns to face forward. He takes a deep, shaking breath before forcing out the fakest laugh Martin has ever heard. “Ah- I’m sorry, no. It was- I shouldn’t have said anything. We should just go over the case file while we have the time. I have my copy here somewhere.” He starts rooting around in his laptop bag, once again avoiding Martin’s eyes like the plague.

Martin sighs. To push or not to push? The morning has gone really well so far, so maybe he should just leave well enough alone. Jon seems eager to get on with it without a fuss, so he should follow his lead. He’ll try again once they’ve compared notes.

“Ah, here we go.” Jon pulls out his copy of the folder and flips through. “As a recap, we have ‘Hackney Sterling,’ established 1924 and currently owned and operated by Erica Skye. The business was originally called ‘Hackney Gemstones and Precious Metals’ while it was owned by a con artist and fence who went by a dozen aliases. This man was not well liked, and died under mysterious circumstances when he plummeted from a fourth floor window.”

“I can only assume that’s what happens to a guy who goes by that many names but somehow decides that _Simon Fairchild_ is the one that makes him sound the most like a legitimate businessman,” Martin scoffs. “I’ve heard my fair share of fake names, but that takes the cake.”

Jon hums his agreement. “He must have liked it well enough, since as far I can tell it’s the name he died with. Better than Jack Hackney, in any case.”

“Shut up, he did not!” Martin leans in closer to peek at the list. “That’s not one of the names on here. You’re totally making that one up.”

“I am _not_. It sounds ridiculous, but that’s part of what I was researching last night,” Jon insists. He hands Martin the file and pulls out his laptop, balancing it precariously on his knees. “I could only find a few traces of that name, and it’s anyone’s guess as to what his real name was, but he definitely went by Jack Hackney at least twice between 1918 and 1931.”

When the computer flickers to life, Jon tilts the screen toward Martin. “See? These are permits from the jewelers back in 1923. They’re all signed by ‘Jack Hackney’ and the handwriting matches all confirmed examples of his signature.”

Martin pushes his glasses up on his nose and nods slowly. “Yeah, I think you’re right. That squiggly part of the ‘J’ looks _exactly_ like the one on James Lockheart and Thomas Jackson. Where on earth did you even find that, if not the Institute’s records?”

Jon pulls his laptop back toward his chest, looking sheepish. “I, um. I have a friend, Georgie Barker, who researches ghost sightings. You might have heard of her podcast, actually. It’s called _‘What the Ghost.’_ She’s actually covered stories about Jack Hackney, although almost none of it was particularly… _evidence_ based. More of a culture piece, really, the same as you’d find on any urban legend.”

That name _does_ ring a bell, and Martin remembers in a flash the night he, Tim, and Sasha looked Jon up on Facebook. “Hold on, _that_ Georgie, the one who posted the cat picture? She’s the host of ‘ _What the Ghost’?”_

“The very same,” Jon answers stiffly. “She takes a great amount of joy in humiliating me on social media.”

Martin mentally kicks himself for bringing it up. Hurry, Martin, change the subject. “Well that- that’s really cool! Not the humiliating part, I mean, not that it’s an embarrassing picture! Because it isn’t, not at all. Unless you think it is, then that’s… less cool. But I actually do listen to the podcast sometimes, and it’s good stuff! Less of a stomach for it since I got this job, but… anyway, did she have anything else useful for our case?”

To Martin’s immense relief, Jon takes hold of the lifeline and steers them back into safer waters. “Unfortunately, no. This is all purely speculation, of course, and until we actually put in some investigative work we won’t even know for sure that this alleged haunting has anything to do with Hackney or Fairchild at all.”

“What, was there _another_ famous local death in this building that Elias forgot to mention?”

“Fair enough,” Jon says with what Martin swears might have been a laugh, given a little more time to grow before cutting out with a sigh. “So, do you have anything to add? I’m assuming not, since our most reliable sources are from the Institute itself, but I thought I’d ask anyway.”

“Fair enough,” Martin echoes. “And no, not really. I honestly got stuck in a YouTube rabbit hole about the jewelry making process about an hour in. Good looking out on Jack Hackney, though. If we’re going ghost hunting, we’ll have to at least be able to call it by name, yeah?”

Jon scowls. “We are not _ghost hunting_. You heard Elias; it’s probably just some prankster capitalizing on the local legends to cause a scene.”

Martin raises his eyebrows in challenge. “So instead of the police, it falls to us? Why are we here, if not to prove that it’s a haunting?”

“It isn’t our job to prove that it's a haunting. In fact, I’d argue that is perhaps the opposite of our goal. Once we debunk this nonsense, the police can handle it properly,” Jon argues. 

“So we’re like…the Ghost Mythbusters?”

“Like who?”

“Oh look,” Martin says quickly, handing the file folder back to Jon and grabbing his bag. “I think this is our stop.”

* * *

No one is waiting for them at the door of Hackney Sterling. The shop itself is dark and empty, but the door opens without any fuss. Martin gestures Jon in ahead of him and Jon complies with a jerky little nod and a grumbled thanks. Martin takes a look around, admiring the decor. It’s very clean in here, the glass jewelry cases free of smudges and streaks. He imagines it looks simply brilliant in proper lighting, with tiny rainbows refracting off of the big crystalline chandelier and showcasing all of the lovely displays. 

Jon nudges him with his elbow and points. “That’s our potential haunting,” he says lowly. “They’ve cleaned it out, but…”

Martin sees what he means. In the far corner of the shop, exactly one case is anything less than flawless. Though it didn’t shatter, a spiderweb of cracks spreads across the top of the case as if something crashed into it from a great height but somehow failed to break through. “Alright,” Martin says with more confidence than he feels. “Let’s check it out then. See if we can find any-“

“Ectoplasm?” Jon cuts in with an eye roll. 

“ _Clues,”_ Martin huffs. “We’re researchers, aren’t we? That’s what we do. We compile data.”

Jon makes a noise that sounds like he completely believes Martin. “Alright, then. Lead the way.”

Martin does so, but quickly gets distracted by the artistry around them before he can get to the back of the store. In particular, he spots a specific style of jewelry that he remembers from the shop’s website. “Oh, wow,” he says under his breath. “Jon, look. The videos really didn’t do these justice, did they?”

Jon walks past where Martin is standing before pausing, visibly deliberating. He turns around with a helplessly curious look on his face. “Incredible,” he says as he joins Martin at the jewelry case. “Is this really-?”

“It’s all diamond and sapphire, yeah.” Martin points to the broad, flat ring with a gorgeous mosaic of constellations masterfully tendered in tiny white and blue gemstones. “That one’s, what, Libra? I wonder if they have the others.”

“Virgo,” Jon corrects him matter of factly. “And they make them to order, so I sort of doubt it.”

Martin looks at him askance, expecting an eye roll or a scowl, but Jon’s gaze is fixed firmly on the jewelry and his expression is more genial than Martin’s seen yet. So he hazards another comment. “I thought- my mum’s a Libra, and her birthstone is sapphire.”

“The cusp of the signs is midway through September. That’s why they’re made to order; two people born in the same month can have different star signs,” Jon explains distractedly. “But just look at this one- it’s _The Great Wave!_ ”

Martin makes an appreciative noise and crouches further over the case, his elbow brushing Jon’s shoulder. Just as Jon said, there’s another ring of the same type, except for the fact that this time the tiny stones form a recreation of the famous Hokusai print. He recognizes a few others nearby; there’s a topaz and sapphire swirl cut with obsidian that’s obviously reminiscent of _Starry Night,_ and one ring that's entire face makes up an amorphous clock in the style of Dalí, painstakingly crafted in minute detail. 

“That’s amazing! I can’t believe they make all of this stuff by hand. God, even if I could afford something like those constellation rings I would never be able to wear it. I would just stare at it forever…” Martin sighs. “Sorry, we should get to it. It’s so easy to get caught up in art, isn’t it? Especially the stars and the sky.”

Jon takes a very deep breath next to him before exhaling in one hesitant chuckle. “I can certainly empathize with that. I, I suppose you could say that we’re lost, couldn’t you? You know, _Lost in the_ -”

“The more conservatively priced wedding bands are on the other side of the counter,” a helpful voice chimes from above, scaring Martin half to death.

“Aaah!” Martin yelps and leaps backward from the case, knocking into Jon and stepping on his feet at the same time. Jon, not expecting to have his shoes pinned to the floor, falls backward the second he tries to turn around and only just manages to catch himself on the corner of the case behind him.

Martin makes an equally graceless save, windmilling his arms until his palms slap down hard on the glass in front of him. He looks up at the top of a narrow staircase rising along one wall and sees a figure silhouetted against an open door. “S-Sorry! We’re here for the, er-”

A light flicks on in the shop and Martin’s eyes sting in the sudden brightness. They finally adjust to see a young woman, late twenties, looking down at them with an unamused expression. She’s wearing denim overalls and her face is streaked with broad, dusty swipes of color. Even from a distance, her storm gray eyes are striking as they study the two of them.

“Ah, you two must be my two o’clock meeting. Sorry if you didn’t get the email, but all of my consultations are postponed while I get this whole vandalism business sorted,” the woman says. “The wedding isn’t for another two months, isn’t that right? We ought to be open again next week, so feel free to come back at the same time.”

Martin’s face lights up red, and even though it’s harder to tell with Jon, he’s sure the other man is in the same state from the way he hunches in on himself. “No, no,” Martin says quickly. “It’s not for us- we’re not even _dating._ ” 

“What he _means_ to say is that we aren’t here for a consultation,” Jon cuts in with a silencing glare. “Are you Erica Skye?”

The woman’s eyebrows climb into her bandana. “I am. And if you’re not here to shop, you’d best come up then.” Erica waves them through a door and up another narrow half flight of stairs into the split level above, her combined studio apartment and workshop. 

“Don’t mind the mess,” she tells them, hopping over the various stacks of papers and piles of scrap metal littered across the floor. “Unless you happen to see a big chunk of green rock; let me know about that one. I think the cat might have run off with it and I never did confirm if that raw stone my last client dropped off was jasper or malachite.”

Martin raises his eyebrows at Jon. “After you?” he asks. 

Jon mutters darkly but moves further into the flat, each footfall placed precariously to avoid contact with any of the debris. “Miss Skye-“

“Erica, please.”

“Erica, I believe introductions are in order. My name is Jonathan Sims and this is my colleague, Martin Blackwood. We’re researchers from the Magnus Institute.”

Martin is begrudgingly proud; Jon didn’t package a single ounce of venom into the word ‘colleague’ as he’d half expected. Although he may just be too focused on not stepping on any papers to be properly petty.

Erica waves her hand in the air without looking back at them. “Yes, yes, Uncle Eli mentioned he’d be sending some bookish types. Tea for either of you? Coffee? I was going to put the kettle on anyway.”

Martin snaps his head up just in time to stop himself from crashing into Jon, who has frozen with one foot in a precarious half-step over a pile of scattered, unpolished stones. “ _Uncle Eli?”_ he all but squeaks. “You mean Elias- he’s your-?”

“Mr. Bouchard neglected to inform us that this was a visit for family,” Jon says, much more steadily than Martin. 

Erica finally makes it to her kitchenette and laughs brightly as she goes on tiptoe to pull down her kettle from the cupboard. “Oh no, it’s not like that. He’s not _really_ family, he’s just one of my grandfather’s business contacts. Gramps always took me along to the institute when I was a kid, so I was around him a lot, and then _boom!_ Uncle Eli. Now come on you two, take a seat and I’ll give you the rundown over tea.”

Jon looks only moderately panicked when he looks back at Martin, so Martin keeps his game face on and nods. Blood relation or not, they _cannot_ screw this up. Well, they already didn’t want to do that. But now they _really_ have to make a good impression. 

In this situation, the smart thing to do would be to put up a unified front, with the more put together of the two of them doing most of the talking and the other one backing him up when needed. Clearly, Martin will be relegated to support on this endeavor so they don’t make fools of themselves in front of an important client. So when Jon gestures for Martin to take the seat closest to Erica’s at the little square kitchen table, Martin feels completely justified in feeling like the world just tilted on its axis. He tries his best to convey this sentiment calmly with a series of looks and gestures while Erica’s back is still turned.

“What am I supposed to make of that?” Jon hisses under his breath.

“Oh for the love of- you need to be the one talking to her! I’m under dressed and you clearly did more research than I did!” Martin responds at the same low volume, although noticeably more shrill. He didn’t get a chance to put his jacket back on and it’s too late to do so now without it being weird. Jon’s actually dressed professionally, curse him, looking sharp even while sleep deprived and hungry, so that’s just another point in favor of him taking the lead.

Jon doesn’t seem to share Martin’s reasoning, though his face is pained as he admits it. “Normally, I would agree with you. But of the two of us, you are much better at actually _talking to people.”_

“And?”

Jon quickly checks to make sure Erica isn’t looking before all but shoving Martin toward the empty seat. “ _And,_ blood relation or not, you’re the one who can make the best impression on our _boss’s_ _niece_ , who we would very much like to view us favorably if we’re to continue our employment!”

Martin lets himself be sat down with only a token grunt of protest. Erica turns at the noise to find Martin and Jon seated in a picture perfect tableau of professionalism. “Sorry, we were just wondering; have you got any honey for the tea?” Martin asks breezily. 

“Sure do.” After grabbing it from another cabinet, Erica brings it over with the three mugs of tea, along with sugar and cream. “Help yourselves.”

Jon shoots him an odd look, but doesn’t say anything as he takes a heaping spoonful of honey and stirs it into his mug. Martin waits until Erica has doctored her own drink before taking cream and sugar for himself- one portion of cream to two portions of sugar, the same way Erica took hers.

“This is excellent, thank you,” he says after the first sip, subtly nudging Jon’s foot under the table.

The man almost chokes on his tea in his hurry to agree. “Yes, yes, excellent. Much obliged.”

Erica smiles, leaning her chin in her hand. “Well, you’re quite welcome.”

“So,” Martin says. “We’re ruling this as vandalism?”

“Hm? Oh.” Erica rolls her eyes good naturedly. “What I said down in the shop is just what I’ve been telling my customers. I’m not extra keen on it getting out that we’ve got ghost problems. Brides and grooms-to-be can get dead superstitious when they’re approaching their big day and I don’t need to lose business over old Jack Hackney.”

Martin sits up a little bit straighter, glad for Jon’s information sharing session on the train. “Jack Hackney, the original owner of the shop? Do you have reason to believe you’re being haunted by his ghost specifically?”

Erica looks impressed. “Ah, so you did do your homework. And, well, not any specific reason. He’s just the only one I know for sure is linked to this building. It’s funny, my grandfather always did tell me stories about that man, usually when we were on our way to your institute. I always thought it was codswallop meant to heighten the experience or something, but now I’m not so sure.”

“Because of the incident downstairs?” Jon prompts, and oh yeah. Probably a good idea to let him tackle the factual side of things.

“Incidents, plural,” Erica responds with a wince. “The case you saw downstairs wasn’t nearly that bad the night before last. I’ve been locking everything up tight as a drum at night and staying up to keep watch since the first time, and nothing happened. Must have dozed off at some point last night though, because the next thing I knew there was a huge crash. When I went downstairs to check, the cracks had doubled. The glass was hit in the exact same spot a second time, but there was no sign of a break in and no one in the shop but me.”

Martin lets out a sympathetic noise and sets his tea down, learning forward in earnest. “That sounds terrible. Weren’t you scared to be here alone, knowing something like this might happen?”

“A little,” Erica admits with a sigh. “But what else am I supposed to do? I set out cameras to back me up, but they all cut out right when the damage is supposed to occur. And without evidence, I can’t get any help from the police. That’s why I called Uncle Eli for help. There’s nobody else who _can._ ” Her eyes begin to shine with sudden emotion, and Martin realizes with a start that Erica may begin to cry. “I- I’m sorry, it’s just I don’t know what to do. This is stupid, I shouldn’t have wasted your time with this. I’m so sorry to have bothered you both, I’m sure you have work to be doing instead of listening to me fret.”

Jon looks ready to bolt at Martin’s side, blanching in the face of Erica’s tears and seeming for all the world like a man who would _very_ much like to go back to work like the woman says. Martin grabs his forearm with a warning glance; they’re not going anywhere, and he says so. “Erica, this _is_ the work we’ve come to do. Why don’t you go stay the night somewhere and let us watch the place for you tonight?”

“Martin,” Jon splutters. “I really don’t think-”

“Oh my god, would you really do that?” Erica asks with a hand over her heart. “That would be… No, what am I saying? I can’t ask you to do that! Besides, I don’t have anywhere else to go. I should stay up with you!”

Martin gives Jon’s arm a squeeze. “Erica, no. You’re exhausted as it is. We’re being reimbursed for work related travel, so I’m sure the institute can absolutely put a family friend of Elias up in a hotel for one night. We can do at least this much to put your mind at ease and let you get some well-needed rest. Can’t we, Jon?”

“... We can,” Jon says grudgingly. “Just make sure you give us a copy of the receipt.”

“Wow, just… _wow.”_ Erica grins and leans across the table to wrap her arms around Martin in a hug. “You two really go above and beyond, don’t you? Alright, I accept! Just let me go pack an overnight bag and make a couple of phone calls, okay? Gramps usually just calls the landline and I’ll need to let him know I’m out for the night in case he misses me and worries.”

“Of course,” Martin says, giving her back a perfunctory pat before withdrawing. “Take all the time you need, alright? We’ll be right here planning everything out. You won’t have to worry about a thing.” 

The only one who has to worry about anything right now is Martin, whose head may _actually_ explode from the force of Jon’s death glare. Well, tough. Jon put Martin in charge; he can deal with the consequences of his poor decisions like everyone else.

* * *

Erica closes her bedroom door and leans against it, catching her breath. That went _so_ much easier than she thought it would. She crosses over to her nightstand, where her antique rotary phone sits, and dials the number she knows by heart.

“Magnus Institute, London.”

“Rosie!” Erica croons. “It’s Erica. Is Elias about?”

“Of course. Let me buzz you over.”

Erica hums along to the hold music for the few seconds it takes for Elias to pick up. “Erica. You know you don’t have to update me on every little thing.”

“Do I know that?” she wonders aloud, twirling the phone cord around her finger. “I suppose on some level I do. _Someone_ broke my store’s security cameras with all of their snooping, didn’t they?”

Elias sighs. “Your imbursement will be wired over tomorrow, after the job’s done. He’ll be in position tonight, I trust?”

“Yeah, yeah, he was on the train this morning and he’ll be finished mucking around by midnight. Wants to give them time to build up the suspense; you know how Gramps is when he gets into his moods. Those two are bloody easy to yank around, by the way, and that’s coming from someone who _doesn’t_ run with Cane. Thought your pet project was going to faint when I started crying.”

“Yes, emotions certainly aren’t his forte,” Elias says dryly. “Well, as much as I love our chats, you’ll have to excuse me. I do have a business to run. Just have Simon call me when it’s done so I can arrange transportation back to Chelsea.”

Sneaking a peak toward her door, Erica raises her voice slightly and sings, “I’ll let him know! Bye bye, Uncle Eli!”

Elias hangs up on her.

Erica chuckles. Oh, but this is going to be _extremely_ entertaining.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god, THANK you all so much for sticking with this (especially y'all in the RQ Discord; after someone said it had been rec'd there I may have gone through every mention of this fic and used that to fuel the last 2000 words of this chapter) I'm finally back in the groove now that I'm no longer scrambling with the re-opening of my workplace, and I should have more regular writing time again. I'm still really enjoying the fic and the direction I'm going with it, and I hope you do too! I won't be able to reply to all of the messages in my inbox but I adore each and every one of them and use them for motivation. (Now if only Jonny and Alex would stop coming for my life on a weekly basis, I would be good to go!)
> 
> <3


	8. Chapter 8

While Erica packs and puts her work projects away, Martin gingerly coaxes Jon into popping down the street for a late lunch. He’s still not totally sure Jon isn’t going to suddenly collapse, but he’s also not willing to try and force Jon into anything else just yet. The other man is visibly fuming even as he examines a sandwich menu with intense focus. 

Martin takes the opportunity to vent his woes to his friends. 

* * *

**Martin: Guys, I fucked up.**

**Tim: oh my god you punched jon DIDNT you**

**Martin: No, of course not!**

**Sasha: Good, that means he won’t see it coming when *I* punch him. What did he do Martin???**

**Martin: He didn’t do anything, I did! I promised the shop owner we’d stay the night here and watch out for ghosts.**

**Tim: ooh, is someone on the rebound already *eye emoji***

**Martin: Alone, Tim. Just me and Jon.**

**Tim: ew nvm**

**Sasha: Do you need one of us to come out there and help? We can leave work early if we have to**

**Martin: No need for that. Just if you happen to be up late, I’d appreciate having someone to text. It’s going to be a long, quiet, awkward night otherwise.**

**Tim: say no more**

**Sasha: Oh my god**

**Sasha: Martin, he just chain chugged three cups of coffee**

**Tim: would have done 4 if sasha wasnt a coward and also mean**

**Sasha: I am not a coward, Tim. I just drink espresso when I need to stay up, like a civilized millennial. I’ll grab something from Canyon on the way home**

**Martin: I love you guys <3**

**Tim: i know**

**Sasha: <3 <3**

**Sasha: That’s an extra to make up for Tim**

**Tim: :( rude**

**Tim: actually yeah i deserved that**

* * *

“It’s your turn.”

Martin jumps with a start and looks up guiltily from his phone. Jon holds a wrapped sandwich in one hand and gestures Martin forward with the other. “Sorry! Sorry, I’ll be quick.”

“No, no, take your time,” Jon drawls. “We have all the time in the world, seeing as we won’t have to make it back to work today.”

If he weren’t holding up the line, Martin would argue that point. As it is, he hurriedly steps up to the counter and orders. By the time he’s finished, Jon has found a small table, eaten most of his sandwich, and is now tapping at his own phone. He shoves it deep in his pocket as soon as Martin approaches with his bag. “Alright, let’s get this over with.”

* * *

**Jon: Georgie, please help.**

**Georgie: Sounds to me like you’re the one who got yourself into this mess, as usual. You were going to have to face him eventually**

**Jon: That’s not actually helpful, Georgina.**

**Georgie: Kiss my ass, Jonathan**

**Georgie: Really, though. Take a couple of hours of stakeout time to psych yourself up and then apologize to him.** **_Properly_ **

**Jon: I feel like we should at least find something to talk about so I can segue into it, shouldn’t we?**

**Georgie: My lord, the man** **_can_ ** **think ahead. There’s hope for you yet. If you really can’t talk about the weather or the ghosts properly, try to treat it like you’re an actual celebrity meeting a fan. He’ll warm up to you again if he starts geeking out**

**Georgie: Good luck**

**Jon: Thank you, Georgie.**

**Jon: (...)**

**Georgie: I can see you typing, just send the damn emoji you idiot**

**Jon: <3 That’s still rude. **

**Georgie: <3 You still deserve it**

* * *

Erica greets them at the door with a wide grin and her keys. “That big, rusty old thing is for the front door, and the little one is for the studio. Just in case you need the loo or some coffee,” she explains. “Are you sure you’ve got enough to eat? You’re welcome to raid my cupboards, even if it’s mostly noodles at this point. Haven’t had a chance to do the shopping.”

Martin takes the keys, folding them in his palm with a dip of his head. “That’s really kind, thank you! But we’re all set, I ordered plenty of sandwiches to last us. So you just be safe, and don’t worry! We’ll take care of everything.”

“Oh, you are just too precious. The only thing I’m worried about is that you two will have too much fun without me!”

Jon chuckles. “Oh, I wouldn’t count on  _ that.” _

* * *

The first hour of their vigil passes in a truly painful silence. Jon is clearly still mad at Martin for landing them in this situation in the first place, but at least he’s letting his anger stew in silence instead of boiling over on Martin. They sit near the locked front door, in chairs they carried down from Erica’s flat, and look anywhere but at one another. Jon watches the cracked case intently while Martin alternates between scribbling in his notebook and texting. 

Tim turns out to be a bust; he’d apparently gotten the wrong pot of coffee and chugged  _ decaf,  _ because by midnight his typos are severe enough that Martin orders him to bed. Sasha sends effusive apologies for her own absence, but Martin understands. Sometimes flatmates have a bad breakup and need you there to wallow with them. It happens. 

It turns out that Jon didn’t actually think to buy any more sandwiches from the shop. He’s lucky that Martin did, and that he’s willing to share when it hits ten o‘clock and Jon’s stomach can be heard over the traffic outside. He takes a corned beef sandwich without making eye contact, and only nods his thanks when Martin quietly hands him a second one for later, sticking it in the deep pockets of his overcoat. 

After Martin checks the time  _ again _ (quarter past twelve, he’s going to absolutely die of boredom isn’t he?) he finally spots something new. A small, shiny spider skitters out from underneath his chair and starts stalking across the floor. It’s the only thing of interest he’s seen in two hours, so Martin finds himself watching it ambulate with curiosity. 

It comes back from the open floor and follows the edge of the wall all the way to a corner, where Martin can just make out a shadow- hold on, was that there before? He stands abruptly, startling Jon. 

“What is it?” 

“Nothing, just want to know what’s over there.” He goes over to investigate and is delighted to find a portable radio plugged into the wall. The spider and it’s whereabouts slip from his mind entirely. “Oh,  _ wicked.” _

“What did you find?” Jon asks. 

In lieu of an answer, Martin unspools the long cord and brings the radio closer to his chair. He sits down with the device in his lap and gleefully switches it on, letting it hum and flash to life. There isn’t any music yet, only static, so Martin starts fiddling. “I wonder how old this thing is. It’s very retro, isn’t it?”

Jon carefully unfolds himself from the self contained pretzel his limbs have held themselves in for the past several hours and scoots his chair marginally closer to Martin’s. “It would appear so. Strange, don’t artists typically keep more up to date on their musical equipment?”

“Nothing wrong with taking a break from the iPod, although I guess that would be easier,” Martin counters as he wrestles with the creaky antenna. “Besides, I like old radios and recorders and the like. They have such a lo-fi charm to them, don’t they? Like vinyls! Now  _ that’s  _ a musical format I can’t see dying out anytime soon. Hipsters can’t get enough of it.”

Jon makes a noise of realization. “Ah. I’ll have to let Georgie know there’s a word for that. Maybe then she’ll believe that I’ve experienced enough and stop trying to get me to listen to the anime beats. If that’s what you have on your mobile I must respectfully decline.”

Martin snorts. “Oh god, please no. I’m all for a little bit of mindless music when I need to work, but what I enjoy typically has a little bit more…” He struggles to think of a fitting word, although  _ plot  _ comes to mind. 

“Substance?” Jon suggests, gesturing at Martin.

“Yeah, substance!” Martin agrees. “Songs that tell stories, albums with themes, that kind of thing.” Then he does a double take, looking between Jon’s hand and the logo on his own shirt, which that hand is clearly pointing to. “Like- yeah, like the Mechs. Sorry, I wear this shirt all the time but I’m not used to people knowing what it  _ means,  _ y’know?”

Jon winces, but forces a smile. “I know.”

Martin can’t help the answering grin spreading across his face. Wow, Jonathan Sims of all people, a fan of the Mechanisms. They finally have something in common to talk about during the night! “Okay, cool. We’re doing this then? First things first- favorite album, go.”

“ _ The Bifrost Incident,”  _ Jon answers after a moment's hesitation. “It’s the most challenging, technically speaking, and I like the story a lot. The horror doesn’t hurt either, as it’s my genre of choice.”

“Ah, nice. Solid choice!”

Jon raises an eyebrow. “I take it you’re of a different opinion?”

“Oh no, don’t get me wrong, Bifrost is magnificent!” Martin assures him. “I just have a real soft spot for  _ Once Upon A Time (In Space). _ It… it helped me through a lot, you know? Even though I don’t get to hang out with the people who introduced me to the band anymore, that was kind of our  _ thing _ , for a while.”

“It was a rather sad story,” Jon points out with a frown. “You say it  _ helped  _ you?”

“Well… yeah.” Martin sets the radio on the floor next to his bag and runs a hand through his hair, trying to figure out how to word this. “I know all of the albums have sad endings, and I know there’s definitely more queer romance involved with all of them than pretty much any other set list I’ve ever seen, but it’s honestly just a preference for the source material; I was always more into fairy tales and Greek mythology than the Norse stuff, so I got more of the references. And… honestly, it was just a  _ really  _ compelling love story. Not that Bifrost didn’t have that, because like,  _ whoa,  _ but…” He realizes abruptly that he’s rambling, and that Jon is staring at him in complete quiet and stillness. 

He shakes his head roughly and turns his smile back to Jon. “Enough of that, though. And yeah, I’m sure if I ever saw  _ The Bifrost Incident  _ live, it would jump up to the top of my list. I usually like the ones I can sing along to though, so  _ Red Signal _ might be a dealbreaker. It’s  _ impossible. _ ”

Inexplicably, Jon  _ smirks  _ at that. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”

And Martin listens, gobsmacked, as Jon casually recites the entire invocation from  _ Red Signal  _ with only a couple of minor stumbles. He looks almost bored while he does it, eyes drifting up and to the side like he’s trying to remember his shopping list instead of a lengthy bit of eldritch-adjacent speech. He looks very pleased with himself as he finishes, gracing Martin with a rare genuine smile.  


“Glad to know I can still do that,” he says. “Took ages to get down.”

“That was  _ brilliant, _ Jon!” Martin gushes. “God, just sitting here listening to you say it gave me chills, I can’t  _ imagine  _ hearing that performed on stage!” 

Jon gets a funny look on his face at that. “You keep saying that,” he notes. “How you’d- have you never been to a show?”

Martin narrows his eyes at the tone. It hasn’t been prevalent in the fans that he’s met, but he knows that gatekeeping is a thing and as much as he’d like to think otherwise, Jon does seem like the type of person who’d be kind of elitist over seeing music performed live. “Only one,” he admits, trying for casual but probably coming off as defensive. Shit. He powers cheerfully on. “It was a great time, though. Got sloshed, made some friends, lost my virginity, dyed my hair black, the whole college experience. Got the T-shirt and everything, heh.”

Jon flushes darkly and recoils, scandalized. “Lost- not- surely you don’t mean  _ at  _ the-?”

“Nononono!” Martin backpedals furiously, feeling his face begin to heat up to match Jon’s. “Poor word choice, sorry.  _ After,  _ I mean. God, I could never, not even just to say I did it. Be awfully bad form to have sex at a concert when the band’s frontman is ace, wouldn’t it?”

“Well- I- quite so,” Jon huffs. He settles back into his chair, visibly ruffled but not quite so on-edge. “You- you must be quite the fan. I don’t think most people even know what asexuality  _ is,  _ let alone respect it, no matter who they know that might be ace.”

Now it’s Martin’s turn to blush. “Hah. Well.”

Jon looks at him suspiciously. “Well what?”

“I might have…. asked around. That night.” Martin shrugs sheepishly. “I might have been wearing a pride pin but it’s not like any of the band members were. I was curious.”

“Curious,” Jon repeats dully, smirks and blushes long gone. 

“Yes,  _ curious.  _ You get a bunch of steampunk folks singing about a tragic gay romance and you get curious about their own… preferences. Vic- one of the people I went with- taught me what it meant.”

“Hmm,” is all Jon says in response before turning his newly-returned glare to the radio on the floor. “So. Will this thing work or not?”

So much for that single common thread getting them anywhere tonight. He doesn’t know what he’s done to offend Jon this time, but frankly, Martin’s tired. If Jon’s homophobic, then Martin doesn’t want to know. He sighs. “I guess we should find out.”

The radio does, in fact, work, in the sense that it can catch frequencies. The issue lies in the fact that the tuning indicator is broken, so they can’t just pick a station and stick to it. They have to scan through and try to hone in on a frequency by ear. Martin finds a few he likes, but Jon dismisses them all after only giving one song a chance. 

For the third time in ten minutes, Jon changes the radio station. Martin intentionally relaxes his jaw and takes several calming breaths. “Nothing up to your exacting tastes?” he asks blithely. 

“Why would you think that?” Jon replies dryly as he scrolls through polka, followed by pop and what Martin thinks might qualify as “Cajun Blues,” before settling on a classical music station. “All of the material available is clearly of the highest quality. I’m simply sampling all that we have on offer.”

Martin rolls his eyes. “As I said before, I can always just use my mobile.”

“And as  _ I  _ said before, I’d much prefer that you didn’t. We need to be able to  _ think  _ as much as we need to stay awake.”

“And a  _ nocturne  _ is going to help with staying awake, is it?” Martin snaps back, immediately regretting it when Jon’s brow pinches in thought. 

“Hmm. Quite right.” And he reaches for the tuning dial once again. 

Martin lets his head fall back against the wall behind him, defeated. He checks his phone for the time; half past two, six minutes since the last time he looked at it. 

The radio suddenly squeals with distortion and Jon curses, snatching his hand back from the tuning dial like it’s burned him. “Rotten old piece of junk,” he mutters, shaking out his fingers. “Why on earth-?”

“ _ I’m here.” _

Martin holds his breath, not daring to make a sound or even blink as he and Jon stare at the crackling radio. Jon in particular seems to be struck dumb. He glances briefly between Martin and the radio, as if to ask if Martin had heard it, too. Martin nods slowly, but doesn’t speak. He’s waiting to see if it happens again. 

_ “Well? I’m waiting. This is the time and place you named.” _

Jon shudders and abruptly yanks the power cord, unplugging it from the wall. It does fuck all, as the radio continues to flash and crackle with the occasional word or phrase thrown in. 

“Jon,” Martin whispers. “This- this is-“

“Perfectly explainable,” Jon cuts him off, though he looks perturbed. “There- maybe it’s caught a police radio nearby.”

“Even if you hadn’t just destroyed the power cord, I don’t think that’s how any of that works,” Martin points out. 

Jon turns halfway in his chair, eyes darting along the baseboard from the door to the corner in search of something to help make sense of it all, before doing a double take out the window. “There,” he breathes, sounding relieved. “That man must have something to do with this.”

Martin looks through the window, squinting into the darkness. There’s only one street lamp nearby, and the radius of light it puts out isn’t doing much for the cloudy night. “What man? I don’t see anyone.”

Jon rolls his eyes and points, exasperated. “Right there, for goodness sake. He’s the only person out there, right underneath the light. Don’t know how you could miss him, all dark and brooding as he is.”

Following his direction, Martin still doesn’t see anyone outside. It was one thing when Jon had his episode that morning; he was clearly stressed and hungry. But this is getting a little out of hand. “Jon,” he starts gently. “There isn’t anyone standing under the lamppost. I think you might need to have a lie down. Remember this morning, with the carriage? You must still be having some trouble.”

Oh, well if  _ that  _ wasn’t the wrong way to go about it. Jon puffs up like a fussy little bird, scowling at Martin. He stands abruptly, carrying the radio with him. “Alright, I’ve had quite enough of this. I know we haven’t gotten along so grandly from the start, but I at least thought you’d be professional about such an important assignment.  _ I  _ know I’m not seeing things, and whatever prank this is, I’m putting a stop to it!” He turns on his heel and marches to the door, muttering darkly the whole way. He throws the latch to unlock it and sets out purposefully into the street, the door slamming shut behind him. 

Martin stares after him, mouth slack. Prank? How the hell would Martin be able to pull off a  _ prank  _ of all things in the middle of a place he’s never been? And by circumventing the need of a power source for a radio to work, no less?

Well, there’s no point in sitting there puzzling while Jon goes and gets himself hurt. He’s clearly not doing alright, and they are technically supposed to be partners. 

Martin sighs. The things he does for academia. 

He makes himself stand to go after Jon, but is held up by the door; it must have locked itself behind Jon somehow. He goes for the latch but finds it stubbornly stuck, no matter how he rattles it. He loses a few more seconds searching his pockets for Erica’s keys, which only just get the job done. He’ll have to remember to let Erica know about that, and maybe suggest a good locksmith to come look at the door. 

Finally, Martin escapes into the night air. He’s instantly alarmed to find himself alone in the street, no Jon or mystery man in sight. Quickly looking both ways, he crosses the street to the lamppost where Jon had claimed to see a man. All he finds is Erica’s radio, laying dented and dark against the brick of a closed up shop. 

He picks it up, tucking it under his arm and looking around frantically. “Hello? Anyone there?”

The radio crackles again suddenly and Martin yelps, dropping it back to the pavement in his fright. It splutters and flashes, spitting out the single word “ _ run”  _ before dying altogether. 

_ Shit _ . There’s no way that’s not a bad sign. 

He turns, fully ready to heed the radio’s advice, and falls into darkness.

* * *

_ “I was beginning to think I wasn’t going to hear from you until morning _ ,” Elias says snidely. “ _ Erica told me you’d be there at midnight.” _

“Oh Elias, you and your schedules. You know time doesn’t really mean that much to me anymore,” Simon says breezily. He sways from foot to foot in the alleyway, glancing occasionally at the poor boy frozen in the Vast’s thrall. He only needs a moment more to marinate, and then he’ll be ready to come out. “The mark is set and ready any time, now. That’s all that matters for your plans with this fellow, isn’t it?”

There’s a pause, and the sound of papers shuffling, before Elias answers. “ _ I suppose that’s true. I do prefer that things run smoothly. Speaking of- I don’t particularly care either way, but how did you dispose of the spare? I don’t want any unnecessary paperwork.” _

“The spare?” Simon frowns. “Might need to get your eyes checked, old friend. There’s only one of your people here.”

“ _ Yes, yes,”  _ Elias says distractedly. “ _ It's fine if you had your fun, I was prepared for that. I only need Jon for my plans, so I won’t be put off with you if you decided to fling the hanger-on into your patron’s realm as long as there won’t be any pesky corpses turning up.” _

“Elias,” Simon enunciates clearly. “I have the man you wanted marked, but I have not seen anyone else with him. He was alone.”

The silence on the other end of the line breaks into crackling static. “ _ Dammit, Erica’s blocked me from the vicinity, that petty little-“ _

“Ah,” Simon chides. “That’s my girl you’re talking about, you know.”

“ _Simon,_ ** _who exactly do you have in your hold?_** **_Describe him._** _”_

The words come forth unbidden, which is right rude; Simon has no reason to withhold this information. “Now now, no need to bring out the big boy voice. I don’t know what you’re raising such a fuss about, he’s just as you said- young, glasses, marked by the Eye,  _ stinks  _ of the Web, holding the keys to the shop right in his hand- he’s even wearing a shirt from that band of his, the one where he does a thumping good invocation.”

“ _ Dear lord,”  _ Elias groans. “ _ You have Martin.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *throws this onto the pile of coping mechanisms* Is that anything? No? Okay cool


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon makes a friend. That friend helps with arguable success. No tape recorders were harmed in the making of this story

Before he even crosses the street, Jon’s anger runs out of steam, leaving behind a tired sort of headache in its wake. It’s just not logical, is the thing, to think that this is some juvenile prank. Martin is- well, Martin is a  _ lot  _ of things, and Jon really wouldn’t have the time to list them all even if he had the motivation. 

Pertaining to this situation, though, one item on the list stands out. Martin is borderline  _ ruthlessly  _ perceptive. How does he know this? Well, Martin doesn’t take honey with his tea. Jon does. So if he’s capable of gleaning that without Jon ever saying a word, it stands to reason that Martin could potentially have manipulated the situation to spite Jon. The problem with that theory is that the evidence itself subverts it, because Martin clearly isn’t a begrudging person if he’s considerate of the tea drinking habits of someone who’s done nothing but shout at him. So, no. Not a prank. 

But while Jon certainly does  _ not  _ believe that it’s a ghost messing with them from beyond the grave, that doesn’t rule out any of the other myriad forces that could be causing all of this. He might not know their origins or species, but he knows that monsters exist and he’s seen firsthand what they’re capable of, too. He has a job to do, and he intends to do it with or without Martin’s help. 

All of this runs through his head in the spare seconds he has before reaching the opposite sidewalk, and he tries to make his face as smooth and neutral as possible before facing down the strange figure. The man across the road gives him a friendly nod when Jon gets close enough. He’s certainly a sight, dressed all in black head to toe with long hair to match. Small tattoos peek out from his sleeves and the collar of his coat, each depicting a tiny, stylized eye. 

“Hey there! Nice to finally meet you in person. Sorry for the dramatics, but after your  _ lovely _ communique back east, I knew I’d have to return the favor. Just a step up from falling headfirst into the Gulf of Mannar, eh?” He cocks his head, looking at Jon curiously. “But seriously, do I want to know what the deal with the tape deck is? I know it’s analogue, but I don’t see how that really helps us here.”

Although he’d nearly forgotten about it, Jon’s fingers tighten around the bulky plastic box like a lifeline. He has no idea what this man is talking about, but if he plays along he just might get some answers to what’s going on. “It’s- it’s my client’s. I’m technically on the Magnus Institute’s dime at the moment. Is there- I mean, I assume there’s something I can do for you, since you asked me to come out here.”

The man chuckles good naturedly. “Nice save. You know, you’re different from how I imagined you. Not quite as aggressive as I thought you’d be, but I guess you don’t need to be. I just need to know that you can live up to your reputation.”

Jon’s heart pounds. “My reputation.”

“Oh, don’t be modest. You didn’t leave much of a trail for yourself, but the effects are easy enough to follow if you know what to look for. Istanbul, Bucoda, Sannikov? The bloody  _ Lukas housing?  _ Now  _ that _ was hilarious. You’ll have to tell me about it sometime after we get this thing destroyed.”

Before Jon can even begin to formulate a compelling response, something brushes against his hand. It’s so soft that he barely notices, but it’s enough to make him look. Small, brown, and many legged, something crawls along his skin. He screams and recoils, dropping the radio to the ground in an effort to fling the small spider away from himself. “Shit!”

The stranger doesn’t even flinch at the crash, but takes great care in deliberately bringing the thick sole of his boot down on the spider’s body as it attempts to scurry away. “Well, that answers  _ that  _ question. No shame in the spider slipping past, even if you did so kindly  _ distract  _ our esteemed patron from everything in a two block radius,” he says dryly. “Another neat trick I hope you’ll share with me, in time.”

Jon sweats. He  _ really  _ has absolutely no idea what this man is talking about, and it’s getting harder and harder to pretend that he does. “I suppose?” 

“In any case, I really do appreciate your discretion. The old lady shouldn’t be able to bother me again just yet, but it’s nice to have a safety net just in case. Now: Can you destroy the book for me or not?”

The air pressure changes then, rushing through the both of them. Jon’s ears pop so harshly at the shift that it compounds his headache, and the other man winces in kind. His hand finally comes out of his pocket, revealing more eye tattoos across his knuckles as he kneads his brow in frustration. “Of fucking course. Come on then, time to run!”

He grabs Jon’s arm and starts out at a clip, dragging him along. Against his better judgement and literally any common sense he might still possess, Jon follows the stranger without protest. 

By the time they’ve sprinted their second block, he’s relying mainly on the stranger’s tight grip to guide him because he can’t actually remember the last time he had to run this far. 

He’s just about to ask what they’re running from, or if they can slow down a bit, when something changes. Jon can’t put his finger on why, exactly, but he doesn’t feel quite so winded as he did just a second ago. He could probably keep going for another two blocks, even. 

The stranger doesn’t appear to share his second wind. His face goes pale and he skids to a halt, jerking Jon along with him with a horrified expression of revelation. “You’re not my contact from Sri Lanka, are you?”

“Sri Lanka? I- I’ve  _ been  _ there before, but-  _ no.  _ No, I’m sorry.”

With a bitten off curse, the man drops Jon’s hand and starts walking in circles, eyes closed as he kneads his brow. “If I could just see  _ past  _ it- dammit, we have to get you below ground until I can see again.”

“Excuse me?”

The stranger halts, his gaze drawing to a battered old cellar door on the side street as if pulled by a guiding magnet. He jogs over and kicks it in, sending dust billowing into the air. “Come on. Age before beauty, and all that.” 

When Jon hesitates, the man rolls his eyes and unceremoniously shoves Jon headfirst into the cellar. He has to take the narrow steps at a run to keep from falling, and before his eyes can adjust to the near darkness, the door slams closed behind him again and he’s alone in the cellar with the stranger.

They stand in the dark, surrounded by roughly hewn earth and sucking down damp dust trying to catch their breath from their sprint. Jon vaguely notices that his headache from before is gone. It has been since they entered the cellar. Or maybe even before? With all the running, it’s hard to tell. 

“You have a light, don’t you?” 

“N-No, I’ve been trying to qui- Is this  _ really  _ the time for a cigarette?” Jon splutters.

A belabored sigh, followed by a disturbance in the air nearby. Long fingers brush against Jon’s hip and he jumps, letting out a squeak.

“Calm down, I’m helping.” There’s a rustling in his pockets before the hand withdraws. A tiny flame springs to life with a metallic click. The ghostly pale face of the strange man comes into stark relief against a halo of black. His eyebrows raise. “Better, yeah?”

“Oh.” Jon grimaces. He’d forgotten about his lighter entirely. How had the stranger even known it was in his pocket in the first place? Well, never mind that. He takes the lighter back sheepishly, harboring the flame against his chest. “Sorry, I’m afraid I don’t quite have my wits back about me just yet.” 

“Can’t really blame you for that, considering you’re not the person I was supposed to meet. So then, what’s your story?” he says bluntly. 

Jon opens his mouth on instinct, but instead of answering with his name or occupation as he feels would be polite, he feels something steering him away. He realizes with alarm that he has the sudden urge to speak at length about his experiences, his fears, going all the way back to his childhood and that nasty book he read. “I… am Jon. I work at the Magnus Institute, and I am on an… assignment. And I could ask you… the same question,” he says slowly, each word an effort. But it alleviates the itch he suddenly has to spill his guts to this stranger.

A dry smile. “Alright, I can respect that. The name’s Gerard. I came to Hackney for a… consultation, you could say. I kind of desperately need a job done and I thought I finally found someone who could do it.”

Jon whistles low in sympathy. “All the way from Sri Lanka? That’s quite the trip for a consultation. Did you not have a phone? The post? Craigslist?”

“Would you believe me if I said I already tried Craigslist?”

“Actually, yes.”

“Like I said, I’m getting desperate. So when I caught the trail of my contact, I jumped at the opportunity. But the thing is, even though they chose this meeting place specifically because they thought we’d be safer here, they obviously weren’t here to meet me. You were. Any thoughts as to why that might be?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Huh. Well, tell me this; does this mean anything to you?” Gerard holds up his hand, showing off the delicate ink on his knuckles.

Jon shrugs. “A high pain tolerance? A childhood fondness for Lemony Snicket?”

“Right, guess not.” Gerard ponders in silence for a moment before his feet start taking him in circles around the cellar. “So wait, do you  _ actually _ work for the Magnus Institute, or was that bullshit?”

“I actually do, though not for long. I’ve only been there a week.”

“Hey, congrats! I hear that’s longer than most archival assistants last.”

“Archival? No, no I’m a researcher.”

Gerard tilts his head and squints at him on his next pass. “Weird. Are you sure?”

Jon scowls. “Fairly so.”

“Alright alright, don’t get fussy. I must still be all muddled.” He halts and looks suddenly to the side, as if he’d heard a noise too soft for Jon to hear. “What about the other one then, in the shop? Did your partner Know to get away?”

“No, my- Martin is still there. How would he have known? And to get away from what?”

Gerard answers exactly none of Jon’s questions, instead going back to his pacing. “Man, wish I’d realized sooner. Could have saved him from Fairchild when I brought you along. Stay here, and I’ll go back for him to make sure he’s okay.” 

He takes one step toward the door and immediately turns back to pacing around Jon. “Right, new plan. He’s extremely not okay, but my actual contact is finally getting close to London- fast too, she must be airborne. She’s like a bloody beacon in comparison to you, no offense. I honestly can’t believe I thought- well, never mind.”

“Sorry, can you get back to the part where Martin needs saving from a ghost? He’s probably moping in the jewelry shop because I snapped at him. Again. And how do you suddenly know so much about this contact of yours when you didn’t before?”

“That will take more time to explain than I can afford to give you,” Gerard says apologetically. “But the short version is proximity and powers. Sri Lanka is a  _ long  _ way from the Watcher’s Throne.”

“Alright, I believe you.”

“You do.” He sounds disbelieving, and for good reason. 

Jon nods. “Absolutely. That sounds like it would take  _ hours  _ to explain to the nice man in the white coat.”

The other man chuckles dryly. “You’re not wrong about that. But I was right, she  _ is  _ on a flight, it must have been delayed. There’s a freak storm right over the- wait,  _ seriously?” _ Gerard stops his pacing and leans his back against the earthen wall, arms crossed and very nearly pouting. “Fairchild, you cloudy little  _ fuck.  _ Oh, and I wouldn’t count on that, by the way,” he says to Jon as an afterthought. “If your Martin was there when we left and he works for the Institute, you might have to go get him.”

“He’s not  _ my- _ you know what, never mind,” Jon sighs. “How am I supposed to ‘get’ Martin? From where?”

“Look, I don’t have time to go step by step here. I  _ cannot  _ risk losing my contact right now and I think I finally have an idea of how this will go now that she’s descended close enough over Heathrow. But I’d look up high. Didn’t know before just now, sorry, so don’t give me that look. It’s all coming back too slowly to be of any use.”

“Too slowly to-  _ what’s _ coming back?”

Gerard blinks rapidly and grimaces. “Yikes, that  _ is  _ a long way up. You’d better get going. I’d take more layers if you can, it’s gonna be cold.”

This whole ordeal has felt like two separate conversations running past one another, and one of them is about to end quite abruptly if Gerard’s expression is any indication. The man turns to leave and Jon jumps forward to catch his sleeve with his free hand. “Wait! If- if you did just save me from- from a ghost or something, I’d like to say thank you, Gerard.”

A surprised but pleased smile creases his lipstick. “You can call me Gerry. And there’s no need to thank me, Jon.” He blinks again, and his mouth twists around the taste of Jon’s name. “Well I’ll be damned, you’re Jon  _ Sims _ . Will wonders never cease?”

Jon’s headache comes back with full force. “You… you know me?” 

“Well, I guess not. I mean, I just  _ Knew  _ you, but I don’t  _ know _ you. Not really. But like I said, I  _ really  _ should be casting off. Take care out there.” And then he throws open the cellar door, letting in a draft that snuffs the small flame of Jon’s lighter. The heavy footfalls of his boots quickly fade into the ensuing darkness and he sprints back into the night. 

Jon doesn’t dawdle; it’s late and he really doesn’t want to be arrested for trespassing in whoever’s cellar this is. He closes the door behind him and starts jogging back in the direction of Erica’s shop, Gerry’s warnings ringing in his ears. None of it makes any sense at all; if he’s to be believed, Martin is no longer in the shop but somewhere ‘up high,’ and needs Jon to come get him. And apparently it’s going to be cold, which Jon thinks is a given considering he had to keep his coat on even inside. But where is he supposed to start looking?

That question answers itself the moment Hackney Sterling comes back into view. The smashed radio still sits where he dropped it, parts dangling by thin shreds of plastic. The tape deck has popped open, revealing something he hadn’t noticed before in the pandemonium; a cassette tape. Neither he nor Martin had thought to open it and check. 

Martin…

Jon glances furtively at the door to the shop, yawning wide open. There’s no time to lose, if Gerry’s to be believed, but this radio has led him to so many clues so far. Maybe this is another. He kneels down on the cold sidewalk and sets the radio upright. He’s in luck- the deck can still close properly. Pressing buttons does nothing until Jon smacks the side of the radio, which must jostle something back into place. He turns up the volume and is surprised to hear a familiar tune.

_ “Way, haul away, the good ship is a-bolding, _

_ Way, haul away, we'll haul away, Joe! _

_ Way, haul away, the sheet is now unfold-ing, _

_ Way, haul away, we'll haul away, Joe!” _

Of course, Jon is more intimately familiar with a different set of lyrics to that particular sea shanty. He looks over his shoulder and studies Hackney Sterling. There’s a fire escape on the side of the building, and Jon knows with certainty that the ladder wasn’t lowered when he left with Gerry. Unlike now. 

“ _ I look to the stars…”  _ he says slowly, his eyes following the ladder to the top of the two story building. “Alright, then. Going up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is short, I know, but if that’s what it takes to get this story finished then that’s how it’s going to have to be. The next chapter may very well be the last, so do with that information what you will. We’re wrapping up, folks!! Thank you so much for continuing to read and leave comments, it means a lot in this whole mess that life has been lately.


	10. Chapter 10

Martin flutters open his dry, stinging eyes with a curse and a healthy ounce of immediate regret. Even if he can’t focus on it for more than a moment at a time, he knows the sky around him is open and beautiful, without a single cloud to block out the stars that spiral out in wild arrays of color. It would be the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, except for the fact that he’s been plummeting through it for thirty minutes with no reprieve or even the suggestion of earth below...

… Earth above? Could he be falling _up_ , somehow? The fact that he hasn’t splattered onto the paved streets of Hackney at terminal velocity after such a long fall is leading him to consider it. Will he instead continue out into the stratosphere until he can no longer breathe and drift with the space debris until he turns to dust? _Would_ he even turn to dust, continue decomposing in the absence of oxygen? Or would he be frozen forever in the same shape he is now, limbs spread eagle from the force of the wind rushing past and through him?

When he comes to terms with the fact that he’s considering the science behind his potential future as a space corpse, Martin makes the executive decision to just…. stop worrying about that for now. That’s a little maudlin, even for his prose and its tendency to run purple. 

But there’s nothing else to focus on, is the thing. Well, aside from the hot numbness of his cheeks and nose from the windburn. The backdrop, as lovely as it may be, is an unchanging blur as he free falls through it. The initial scream that tore from his throat at the beginning of his fall wrecked his voice, and no one would hear him anyway if he decided to try and speak. Miles and miles of empty air surround him in all directions and there’s _nothing else here_. 

And then, as he wrenches his eyelids open against the wind, there is. 

It starts as a pinprick, but rapidly grows larger and larger the closer Martin gets. By the time he registers that the thing he’s hurting towards is a body of water, he’s already wet. How the impact doesn’t kill him instantly he doesn’t know, but he has precious little thought to spare for that because now he’s careening through an endless blue void, the starscape already too far gone to see when he tries to look behind him. His eyes shut automatically against the rain that lashes against his cheeks-

Wait, the rain?

Martin finally forces his eyes open fully, gasping as his head once again breaks the surface of the sea. He only gets half a breath in before another wave crests over his head and sends him spinning back into the dark. Sky and sea, sea and sky; the storm brings them together in an endless torrent, no helpful horizon cutting in to help him make sense of it all. All Martin knows is the sweeping pull of a single drop of rain buffeted in the endless expanse of blue. 

He gets tossed around for a while, unable to stabilize himself enough to keep above water for long. He tries to remember what he was taught as a child, how to get on top of the water and float. The problem with that lesson is that he learned it in a kiddie pool, not the raging sea, and the more he flounders the less stable he feels. Over and over, the waves crash down on him like vicious blows to his body. 

“Oof!” he grunts out in a stream of bubbles. Something heavy just whacked him across the chest. His hands hurry to catch onto the first solid object he’s witnessed since the cold London concrete; a sturdy metal chain. He hauls up with a relieved gasp, dragging himself hand over hand, centimeter by centimeter, above the roiling water and toward the enormous ship the chain dangles from. He’ll deal with the inevitable seasickness when he gets aboard. 

It takes him longer than it should to realize that there are two things wrong with that plan. The first is that the ship itself isn’t in the water; it’s hovering several meters above sea level. The second is that he doesn’t seem to be getting any closer to it, no matter how far he climbs up the chain. He can see himself moving up the chain, can feel the strain of the climb, but he remains suspended in limbo between the ship and the waves lapping at his shoes. 

“Hello!” he shouts up at the deck. “Any help?”

For a moment, his only response is the rain coming down harder, weakening his grip on the wet metal. Then a jolt shudders down the entire length of the chain and he jerks upward. Something is pulling him up out of the water! Martin focuses with all his might on just holding on until he reaches the ship. He’s actually getting closer now. He’s going to make it. 

“Martin!”

He whips his head around, looking for the source of the sound. “Hello? Who’s there?”

“Martin, are you up there? Dammit, I can’t see anything!”

Martin looks down, and sees a raft floating in the water. Crouched on the raft, soaked to the bone, is Jon. How the hell did he get here? And how come _he_ gets a raft? Okay, that’s a little uncharitable considering Martin is already being rescued. But still, it’s the principle of the thing. 

“Oh my God,” Martin gasps. “Jon! Jon, hold on! I’ll come and get you!”

“Please do _not_ do anything stupid!” Jon shouts back. 

He wants to say he’s surprised, but he’s not. Jon _would_ be a prick even when in peril. With a huff, Martin looks away to check his progress. He’s passed the hull of the ship and is very nearly level with the deck, now. He can get himself aboard and then ask whoever’s up here to go back for Jon, too. But when he rises up above the side of the ship, he meets not a helpful gaze but the cold steel of a pistol aimed right between his eyes.

Martin yelps. “Whoa whoa whoa! I come in peace! My friend is down there, can you please help us?”

The shadowed face behind the gun sneers. The barrel clicks. “Make peace with whatever gods you have, because you’re about to die.”

“Please don’t shoot,” Martin begs. 

A devilish grin. “Then jump.”

Martin looks down. Jon’s raft is barely more than a square floating beneath him. If he landed on it from this height, he’d likely overturn or even break it. But if he can push off the side of the ship, he might just get close enough for Jon to reel him in. They’ll be in the water, but at least Martin won’t have a bullet in his brain. They’ll get to safety together somehow. 

He clenches his jaw and glares at the figure on the ship. “Fine. Fuck the ship.” He braces his feet against the side of the ship and pushes off. 

“ _Martin, stop_!”

He starts at how close the voice sounds, causing his hands to let go of the chain prematurely. He begins to fall toward the water. 

Someone crashes into him from behind. Arms wind around his middle and pull hard to the side, sending the both of them tumbling onto rough concrete. Solid, unyielding ground. Martin lands on something angry and pointy-limbed. There’s an elbow in his ribs, and he still hasn’t caught his breath from the fall. Was it a fall? What was he doing? He remembers feeling the need to jump, being afraid, but the details are getting fuzzier and fuzzier, like a forgotten dream. 

“Just what the _hell_ do you think you were doing?” the pointy, angry something demands around a mouthful of Martin’s sleeve.

“Jon?” Martin guesses, accurately. 

“Who else! Good lord, were you so occupied jumping through your handmade skylight that you didn’t hear me calling for you? _”_

Jon worms around beneath him and flails his arm indignantly toward a hole cut into the floor by his head- no, hang on, the _roof._ They’re outside, on the roof of a building, and if the view through the ceiling is any indicator, they’re right on top of Hackney Sterling. Martin pushes himself up and off of Jon to sit back on his heels in shock. Through the hole, he can see the cracked jewelry case positioned directly below. “That… I was going to jump in there? Where did that hole even _come_ from?”

“How on earth would I know? You were up here for who knows how long while I was looking for you,” Jon snaps. “Then I finally show up and see you about to- about to-“

Jon works himself up like that to the point of being speechless, and when he suddenly sits up and faces him Martin fully expects to be hit. He’s dumbfounded to receive a bruising hug instead, Jon’s bony arms clamping around him like vices.

“Whoa!” Martin catches Jon and steadies them both before they can fall over. “Jon, what’s the matter?”

Jon sniffs into his shoulder. “Thank you for making tea for me, and for sharing your sandwiches and snacks. Thank you for being good at talking to people that Erica didn’t hate us both, thank you for talking about The Mechanisms with me even though I shouted at you, and thank you for not jumping to your death right in front of me.”

These are more kind words than Martin’s heard Jon string together at once, and for a moment he doesn’t know what to do with them. But he hears their meaning just beneath; Jon was worried about him, Jon was scared for his safety, and above all, Jon is saying that he’s _sorry_. As hard as it apparently is for Jon to say that word, he’s actually found a way around it that Martin can understand, because he’s done it before. 

Carefully, he returns Jon’s hug. “You’re very welcome,” he murmurs. “I’m sorry, too.”

Jon sags in relief that he’s been heard. “I suppose now we know how the case was damaged so badly,” he muses. “I’m sure anything falling from that height would pack a wallop, but a fully grown adult would be quite the finale.”

Martin shudders and holds Jon closer reflexively. “You know, the stories say Simon Fairchild fell to his death with no trace of a body. You don’t think…?”

“That Fairchild’s ghost is responsible for all of this? That’s utterly ridiculous,” Jon says just a bit too quickly. He extracts himself from the embrace, apparently having had his fill of sentimentality. “There’s nothing weird going on here, I’m sure of it.”

“Jon, I have no memory of getting up here. I was apparently about to jump through a hole I didn’t make without making any sort of decision to do that. How would _you_ explain it unless I was, I dunno, possessed by a ghost or something?”

Jon snorts. “Or something.”

Martin frowns and reaches out to tweak Jon’s ear. “Don’t make me mad at you after you’ve just apologized. That was good, don’t ruin it.”

“A ghost wouldn’t have any reason to cut a hole in the roof,” Jon argues. “It’s got to be vandalism, like Erica said. The cameras, the roof, the cracked glass; there are perfectly normal ways to explain it all. This is a mystery, certainly, but not a supernatural one. We can let the police take it from here and investigate the crime.”

“A crime with what end? Who benefits from doing this, exactly? Nothing was stolen and no one was hurt. This isn’t some Scooby Doo mystery where the competing jewelry shop down the road tries to scare Hackney Sterling out of business and steal their customers by recreating old urban legends.”

A shrill sound rings out and they both scramble away from each other in surprise; it’s Martin’s mobile, screeching in his pocket. He pulls it out, frowns at the unknown number, and flips it open. “Hello, this is Martin.”

“Martin!” Erica shouts loud enough for Jon to startle, too. “Thank goodness, I’ve been trying to reach you for half an hour. Are you still at the shop?”

“O-Of course,” Martin stutters, sweat beading on his forehead as he swaps guilty looks with Jon. “We wouldn’t just leave without letting you know.”

“Whoops,” Jon mouths. 

“I’ll be there in ten minutes, alright, so don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine as long as you _stay calm.”_

Erica doesn’t sound very calm herself, which only serves to make Martin more anxious. “What’s going on?”

“You’re not going to believe this; I got a call tonight from a hotel landline. They tried to threaten me, and said that tonight was my last chance to ‘heed their warnings’ and give up my shop. What _they_ should have heeded was that I wasn’t home, and that I was in fact _sitting in the hotel lobby_ while they made the call!”

“Shut up,” Martin gasps. “Who was it? Did you recognize them?”

Jon scoots closer again, trying to hear what Erica’s saying as she speaks lower and faster. Martin quickly puts her on speaker. 

“I didn’t at first, but it finally clicked as he was leaving. It was Mr. Ramses from the shop down the road! You know, that poor man’s Piaget that can’t quite ride the line between opulent and tacky? He’s been having someone tamper with my cameras and smash my things to scare me out of business, but he couldn’t even do _that_ right because he never left any warnings or demands! Isn’t that just ridiculous?”

“Completely,” Jon agrees with an eye roll directed at Martin. “A very poor attempt at a haunting, if I do say so.”

Martin bristles. “Hey now, I _know_ what I-“

“Jon’s there too! Excellent,” Erica interrupts. “Don’t worry now, I made sure the police knew to look out for you both.”

Jon and Martin exchange nervous glances. “The police are on their way _here?_ Why not arrest Ramses?” Jon asks. 

Erica sounds out of breath when she answers, probably from packing again. “Because Ramses didn’t see me, and the job is still on. His people are still on their way! They’re going to drop something from the roof and the police are going to catch them in the act! I have to go now, they’re waiting for me, but you boys just stay right where you are and let the police handle this. I’ll see you soon!”

Martin’s heart rate kicks up. “Erica, wait, we’re actually-!”

The dial tone sounds just as a siren kicks on directly beneath them. 

“Oh no.”

“Quite.” Jon sighs and goes to lay down on his front, fingers laced behind his head. “Come on, nothing for it but to wait.”

He’s right, Martin realizes. It churns his stomach to think about it, but if the police are here and the suspects aren’t, that paints a target on himself and Jon. They need to leave no doubt in the officers’ minds that they aren’t going to cause any trouble. 

“Doesn’t this seem a little extreme, though?” Martin grumbles as he mirrors Jon. “These aren’t the Crown Jewels and that’s not the MDP down there. Can't we just… I dunno, call down to them?”

“I’d rather not take the risk, and to be honest… if I look over the edge of the building, I might actually faint. I’ve never climbed this high before but I know I won’t like it. I am _not_ a fan of heights.”

“Fair enough. We won’t do anything unless they ask, then.” There is one thing he can do, though. With one hand, Martin punches in a number on his phone and sets it on speaker between the two of them. It picks up on the fourth ring and he hears Sasha’s sleepy voice say, “‘lo?”

“Sasha,” he says congenially. “Remember how we always said that we’d bail each other out of jail?”

“ _What?!”_

“Attention up there!” shouts a voice with a megaphone. “This is Officer Tonner speaking. Stand up so we can see you with your hands raised. You don’t want any trouble from me, I can _assure_ you.”

Martin sighs. “Hold that thought, Sash. Gotta go.”

“Did she say Tonner? Martin Middle Name Blackwood, what the hell did you-“ 

Martin ends the call and pushes himself up, turning to offer Jon a hand. “Come on. Stay a bit behind me and to the side if your vertigo acts up.”

Jon hesitates. “I don’t like this. Why would they ask us to come to the edge? That’s not how this is supposed to work.”

“You have til the count of three before I lose my patience,” Officer Tonner warns. “One.”

“Jon, it’s the _police._ They’re not the ones trying to throw us through the ceiling.”

“Officer Tonner sounds like she would be more than happy to oblige,” Jon snaps back. 

“Two.”

Martin groans and stands up alone, raising his hands over his head. “Hello?” he shouts. “Can you see me?”

There are half a dozen police standing in front of the shop. The short one with the megaphone, he assumes, is Officer Tonner. “Yes, very good. Now the other one. I know I heard you talking.”

“He’s scared of heights!” Martin answers honestly. 

He can’t see her roll her eyes, but he can feel it from fifty feet up. “Do I _look_ like I care? Tell him not to do his vandalism from the roof next time. You stay put, but get him up there before I really get angry.”

“Jon,” Martin hisses. “You need to get up here.”

“I told you, I _can’t_.”

One of the officers pulls something from their pocket- a mobile? A radio?- and listens to it for a few seconds. They walk over to Officer Tonner. “What?” she snaps, half caught by the megaphone. “Alright, fine! Give it here.”

She puts the device to her ear and listens for a handful of seconds before groaning. “Hey, you. What’s your name?” she asks, sounding bored as anything. 

“M-Martin Blackwood! The man with me is Jonathan Sims. We work for the Ma-“

“Magnus Institute, yeah. Fantastic. Yes, Mr. Bouchard,” she drawls into the phone. “It looks like these _are_ your employees. We’re standing down.” She hands the phone back to the other officer and scrubs a hand through her short hair, exasperated. “Get the hell down from there, Blackwood. Christ, what a waste of time.”

Martin blinks and lowers his arms. “O… kay? I guess we can just climb down now, Jon. Jon?”

Jon has relaxed his pose, but he’s still starfished against the roof. “I don’t think I can stand,” he says woodenly. “This is just… it’s too high up.”

“But you climbed all the way up here.”

“Well, yes. You were in trouble.”

Warmth spreads through Martin’s chest and he shakes his head in defeat. “Alright then, I’ll just have to help you. Stick close. If you start to fall, I’ll catch you.”

Jon screws his eyes shut the whole way down, meaning that Martin has very little reason to school his face into any expression other than ridiculously fond. 

* * *

**Martin: Update, I’m home now. It took a while to straighten things out with the police, even with Elias’s intervention. I made sure Jon got into his flat in one piece but I wouldn’t be surprised if he lays out tomorrow.**

**Tim: thank god i can stop waiting by the phone and go the fuck back to sleep, dont you ever scare me like that again**

**Tim: wait so do we have to like him now?**

**Martin:** **_We_ ** **don’t have to like anyone, Tim. I’m just saying that he’s both apologized** **_and_ ** **saved my life tonight, so he’s earned a moment of vertigo. Also, whatever you were planning to put in his desk needs to go back where it came from. Please don’t ruin our truce before it can even start.**

**Tim: fuck off theres no way you know about the horseshoe crab**

**Martin: WAIT I WAS JOKING, WERE YOU REALLY GOING TO PRANK HIM AT WORK**

**Sasha: Of course he wasn’t Martin**

**Sasha:** **_I_ ** **was.**

**Martin: SASHA**

**Martin: Thanks again so much for everything, you’re the best and also a genius for connecting Elias to your friend on the force that quickly. But COME ON, REALLY?**

**Sasha: He was still being rude to you! And it was just one harmless little prank. But now that I’ve practically bailed your sorry arses out of jail, I can’t just** **_do_ ** **that to him now. There’s the waiting period and all that**

**Sasha: And of course, Martin. It was the fastest way to defuse the situation. It’s the least that Erica woman should have done for you**

**Tim: yeah i am def gonna need those details later by the way, that makes no sense**

**Martin: Tell you what, if I manage to keep my job after this I’ll treat you to drinks and tell you all about it**

**Tim: youre not losing your job but if you do ill buy YOU drinks and then you still have to tel me about it**

**Martin: Deal**

**Sasha: Unrelated note; do either of you know if Weird David needs any additions to his aquarium? I don’t actually know how to take care of a horseshoe crab**

**Tim: GO TO SLEEP SASHA ITS LIKE 4 AM**

**Martin: Why am I friends with either of you?**

**Tim: because you love our antics <3**

**Sasha: Because you need us to keep your head on straight <3**

**Martin: <3**

* * *

**“** _S_ _imon.”_

_“Elias.”_

_“I trust you know how displeased I am with how this venture has ended.”_

_“Come on, old friend. Everyone makes mistakes. It’s the way we handle them that matters. I am sorry that Erica’s backup plan didn’t pull through.”_

_“Is that why she’s calling it? That was almost a disaster. Even if my employee hadn’t contacted me about the situation, I would have intervened. It’s far too soon to throw Jon to the Hunt.”_

_“Well, it’s the thought that counts. It isn’t as if that was your only opportunity. The world is a smorgasbord of suffering old boy, a feast of fears! You’ll get your chance, I’m sure of it.”_

_“Indeed. Let Erica know not to expect any purchases from the Lukas family this year.”_

_“What! You know how much she depends on your and Peter's business!”_

_“Then I hope she has another backup plan, and perhaps some more creative improvisation skills while she’s at it. Goodnight, Simon.”_

* * *

**Jon: Are you going to work today?**

**Martin: Unfortunately. You got the call from Elias?**

**Jon: Unfortunately. I’ll see you there.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit y'all, it's happening. As soon as I get this chapter in, the last one will follow directly behind. I somehow turned the last chapter into two full length ones, which... you know, nice! I kind of burned through these like a madwoman, but I'm so glad to have this story come to a close! 
> 
> For the sake of clarity, what happened in this chapter is this: Martin was still in the Vast's hold, and Simon was going to get rid of him by recreating his own legendary death scene. When Jon intervened, Martin forgot the entire experience. Trauma response? Magic? You decide! Whatever the case, Jon is more than willing to accept it so he doesn't have to admit that he believes in ghosts and monsters. Erica knows she and Simon messed up, and in an effort to appease Elias she made up a story to the police in order to get Jon a mark from Daisy in a very tense situation. Luckily, Sasha saves the day by putting two and two together and giving Elias of a friend of hers who happens to work with Daisy and confirming Jon and Martin's identities.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You'll see what I did, there

Martin trudges up the institute steps the next morning like the condemned to the gallows. He’s exhausted and barely functioning after the stress and chaos of the previous day, which is probably the only reason he isn’t actively panicking at this very moment. Botching the job would have been bad enough, but getting _arrested?_ He’s sacked for sure. 

“ _We weren’t actually_ arrested _, we were_ detained for questioning _and then released. There’s a difference_ ,” Jon’s voice echoes snidely in his head. Well, easy for him to say, isn’t it? He wasn’t the one who had to wrestle with the fact that Martin had apparently been _possessed._ Oh no, Jon got to go right back to being a cranky little sceptic while Martin was busy reorienting his entire worldview. 

Honestly though, ghosts and near death experiences weren’t even the most shocking things for Martin to process. He’s still wrapping his head around Jonathan Sims _apologizing_ to him. It’s actually making it hard for Martin to stay annoyed, remembering the panic and then the relief in Jon’s eyes when Martin came to on the rooftop. The way his face had just… crumpled, so different from his usual steely countenance as he wrung his emotions out right there at their feet. His hair had been mussed to the point that it looked like _he’d_ been the one freefalling, and Martin had only just resisted the urge to reach out and smooth it back...

Martin is so wrapped up in reliving the moment that he comes within inches of bumping into someone at the door. He leaps out of the way, scrambling in his haste to apologize. “Sorry! Sorry, god I’m so- sorry! Are you alright? Here, I’ll get the door for you.”

The old woman sniffs and adjusts the items she’s carrying in her arms before stepping quickly inside. “I’m quite fine, young man. You, however, should keep a better eye on where you’re going. Some of these are fragile.” 

Just another tally against him for Elias to consider when firing him; reckless endangerment of old women. Martin winces and follows her inside. The door closes behind them with an ominous _thud_ and he’s still following behind her as she makes her way to the stairwell. “Yes ma’am, I will! I’m so sorry.” 

“So you’ve said.” The woman pauses at the top of the descending staircase and looks back at him. “You’re Blackwood, from up in research?”

“Y-yeah? How did you-?”

The woman clicks her tongue at him and he shuts up smartly. She shuffles through her possessions, which include a portable cassette tape recorder that Martin is immediately jealous of and a long, thin cardboard tube, the kind he’s seen hold canvases. She holds the latter out for Martin to take. “Have Sims return this document to me by the end of the day. I need it ready for a business meeting scheduled for this evening. I’d go to him myself, but I’m rather behind already and I’d really rather not have to take the stairs up from the archives more than I need to.”

Martin takes the tube from her. It’s very light, making him second-guess his theory about a canvas. “Of course I’ll give it to him for you. You said you work in the archives? Who should I tell him to send it to?”

“Gertrude Robinson,” she replies crisply. “Sims shouldn’t have any other questions, even if this is the most ridiculous errand I’ve ever had to run to secure a favor. Now, I really must get back to work. So much piles up when you’re travelling.”

As Ms. Robinson begins her slow descent into the archives, Martin reluctantly treks in the opposite direction up toward Elias’s office. Even though he’s _absolutely_ sacked, Elias will still have to let him go clear out his desk. He can drop off this package for Jon while he does. As he walks the two flights up, Martin can’t help but recall the last time he made this trip, when Jon blew up at him for the second time. In hindsight, it’s obvious how flustered rather than angry the other man was. He just didn’t know Jon well enough to know the difference, then, and now he kind of hopes Jon will be waiting outside the office again. Oh, how things have changed over the course of just two days. No overstrung researchers are sitting on the bench, though. This time he’s going in alone. 

Martin knocks on the door and waits anxiously until, finally, Elias’s voice calls out, “Come in.” He pushes open the door and pokes his head around the corner. 

Elias looks up from where he was already setting aside the stack of paperwork he was working on. “Ah. Good morning, Martin. I hope you slept well.”

Martin chokes out a laugh. “Was that a _joke?”_

“Poor timing of inane pleasantries aside, no. My apologies.” Elias gestures to the chairs in front of his desk. “Have a seat. I’d quite like to hear your side of the story before I talk to Jon. And please, Martin- the truth.”

“The truth,” Martin repeats, heart pounding. He sinks into a chair and sets the tube up against the side of it. “Alright. The truth is going to sound… absolutely insane.”

“Yes, I expect so.”

“You’ll probably want to have me hospitalized for it,” he warns. 

Elias folds his hands under his chin and leans forward. “Then I imagine this will be very interesting indeed. Now, **tell me everything**.”

So Martin starts from when he and Jon met Erica. He tells Elias all about the damage he saw in the shop, Erica’s concerns about her cameras, the radio’s strange behavior, and his struggle with the door with no trouble. He’s actually surprised that he can recall it all with such clarity and coherence, even mentioning how glad he was to get to talk to Jon civilly about a common interest. But when he reaches the point of the story where he leaves the shop, he pauses. 

“Go on,” Elias urges, entranced. “ **What happened after you unlocked the door?** ”

Martin breathes deeply. “That’s the insane bit. I… don’t actually remember what happened to me after that. I came to my senses when Jon got to me, and the police were there minutes later. I called Sasha, Sasha called you, and you know the rest from the report.”

He could hear a pin drop on the plush carpet, Elias goes so still and quiet. “You don’t say,” he says slowly. “Did you sustain any sort of injury, perhaps to your head?”

Martin shakes his head maybe a little too emphatically. “No! I thought maybe when Jon knocked me over, but… no. He actually broke my fall. My head never hit the ground. I remember stepping outside the shop to look for him, and then the next thing I know I’m on the roof with no clue how I got there.”

“I see.” Elias ponders that for a moment, staring straight through Martin. “Well, for what it’s worth, I believe you. There are so many things in this world that we can’t explain, and I’m not surprised that such a close encounter has affected you this way.”

Martin blinks. “What? You don’t think I’m mad?”

Elias chuckles. “Martin, do you know where you are right now? I have heard statements from madmen, drunkards, and liars galore. I’ve had people try to trick me, lie to me, and con me out of money with their fantastic tales. Trust me; I know a genuine statement when I hear it, and I believe that you’ve been through an incredible ordeal.” 

“Oh. Well… thank you, Mr. Bouchard.” 

“Elias, please. And you’re quite welcome.” With that, Elias opens a drawer and pulls out a slip of paper, sliding it across his desk. “Take this to the payroll office sometime this week and they’ll give you your reimbursement. And don’t worry about presenting your receipts from this trip; in light of the circumstances, I’ve decided that a more substantial compensation is in order.” He winks. “But I wouldn’t get used to that, so do remember to keep them on hand next time.”

Martin nods numbly. He slips the paper into his pocket and stands. Next time. He isn’t being fired. He might even be sent on more work assignments. _There’s going to be a next time._ “Of- of course. Is that all?”

“I believe so, unless you had something to add?”

“Yeah, no, I’m all good.” Martin backs away slowly, holding the cardboard tube to his chest like a shield. “Then I’ll just… get to work now?”

“That’s perfectly fine. Please do send Jon up when you see him. And Martin?”

Martin flinches to a halt, his flight paused with his hand on the doorknob. “Yes, Elias?”

The older man’s face softens in a barely-there smile. “Erica had nothing but good things to say about your professionalism and level head. Please know that I’m proud to have you on my staff and that I’m looking forward to seeing great things from you here at the institute.” He glances briefly at the tube in Martin’s hand. “Now I won’t keep you from official business any longer.”

He’ll take the dismissal for what it is. Martin takes the stairs a flight down from Elias’s office and heads straight for the break room in research. Now that he knows he isn’t being kicked, he needs a cuppa more than ever before in his entire life. 

He hesitates at the cabinet, but only for a second. When he leaves the room eight minutes later, it’s with two mugs and two tiny packets of honey. It’s better for him than plain sugar, anyway. Probably. It’s fine, no need to examine this more than necessary. 

Jon, of course, is already at his desk and buried in paperwork. Anything to make up for the ruckus they caused, Martin’s sure. “Morning,” he says softly as he approaches. He props the tube up across two piles of papers and holds out a mug. “Brought you something.”

“Thanks,” Jon mutters, distractedly messing with the tube’s placement without tearing his gaze from the paperwork he’s currently filling out. Whatever system he has for all of this, it isn’t one that Martin recognizes. “I’ll add it to the heap.”

“I hope not. You haven’t even tasted it yet, how can you just decide to toss it like that?” Martin demands, mock offended. 

“Tasted…?” Jon finally blinks up at him and his eyes go wide as he leaps to his feet. “Martin! It’s- you. You’re here.”

“Yeeees?” 

Jon runs a hand through his hair and grimaces as he looks between Martin and the state of his desk. “Sorry, it’s just. Elias wasn't available when I arrived so I decided to at least work while I waited, but then I started getting files and folders delivered from the second I sat down and I’ve barely had a second to think, let alone-“

“Breathe,” Martin orders him. He guides Jon back down into his seat with a hand on his shoulder and folds the warm mug into Jon’s hands with the other. “I’ve already been upstairs. Elias wants to discuss last night with you, of course, but it’s nothing bad. We’re both fine, and nobody’s in any trouble. Okay?”

Shock freezes Jon long enough for Martin to tear open the honey packets and add them to both of their mugs. He takes a sip and Jon mirrors him, most likely unconsciously, before squeaking out, “How can you know that? What did Elias _say_?”

Martin does his best not to look too satisfied, but it’s hard. He went from thinking he was out of a job to, well, _not_ that within the space of minutes. Elias _complimented_ them. He’s still a little euphoric over it, honestly. “He… he said that we both did well. And not to worry about turning in our receipts from the trip. I think we’re both looking at a very healthy reimbursement.”

“Thank God… what’s that, then? If it’s not a pink slip, that is.” Jon eyes the tube with suspicion. 

“Bit big for one of those, isn’t it?” Tim pipes up, coming over to see for himself. “What have you got there Martin, a souvenir from your ghostly encounter?”

Martin’s eyes dart between Jon and Tim nervously, but they aren’t even looking at one another. Jon’s too tired to be a prick and Tim’s too friendly to hold a grudge against someone Martin’s already forgiven. He relaxes a little. 

“Not really sure what it is,” he admits as he nudges the tube on Jon’s desk. “Ms. Robinson from the archives said it needed your attention, though. I can deliver it back to her once you’re done if you want.”

“No, no, don’t do that,” Jon says quickly. He pauses, hands hovering over the tube, before adding, “But I appreciate the offer, Martin. Thank you.”

Sasha wanders over from her desk and leans on Tim. “So? What are we waiting for? Open it!”

Jon’s brow furrows in confusion. “What? I don’t-“

“Come on, don’t keep us in suspense! We want to see whatever the _Head Archivist_ sent you!” Tim exclaims. “O-pen it, o-pen it!”

“That’s really not a professional way to-“

“O-pen it! O-pen it!” Sasha shouts, and Martin tentatively joins in the chant with a grin. 

Jon eventually relents, popping the plastic cap off one end and tilting the tube. A large piece of paper slides out in a neat roll and Martin immediately reaches for a paperweight from his own desk to weigh down one side. He blushes when he realizes he’s picked up his hedgehog-shaped pen holder, but puts it down on Jon’s desk anyway. Its cuteness is incongruous with Jon’s trademark scowl, but it’s too late to go back now. 

When Jon unrolls the document- a poster?- a smaller slip of paper falls out and flutters to the floor. 

“I’ll get it!” Martin crouches down to retrieve the paper. He doesn’t _intend_ to read it, but… it’s a very short note, and Ms. Robsinson’s penmanship is quite lovely. 

_Process and return to Gerard K. ℅ Getrude Robsinson, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London_

“Okay, _wow,”_ Martin snickers after reading it. “Self important, much? Who uses their full title on a work memo?” He straightens up and holds the note out for Tim to see; he’d get a kick out of this too. 

But Martin quickly realizes that no one is paying him any attention and that he’s the only one smiling. Tim and Sasha don’t look _upset_ , just… confused. Concerned, maybe. Whatever the emotion is, it’s centered on Jon, who... is just frozen. Martin walks around the desk to read over Jon’s shoulder.

The old fashioned ‘wanted’ poster is very large and curls tightly against the force of the paperweight. For a moment Martin worries that the red splotch in the bottom left is a stain, but it’s just as purposeful as the big red stamp on the opposite side. None of that would warrant this kind of reaction from his coworkers anyway, so he looks to Jon in confusion. “Jon? What’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Jon unpauses to adjust his collar, swallowing hard. His face, which had gone deathly pale, floods with heat. “Nothing’s the matter, Martin. It’s just… well, it’s a little embarrassing to see this now, I suppose. I don’t suppose you know who this is for? Please tell me it doesn’t belong to Ms. Robinson.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t take her for the type to be a fan of… whatever this is,” Tim agrees. 

Martin hands over the note and takes another minute to actually start reading the poster. Hang on, this is a Mechanisms poster! He recognizes it as the same kind Van bought at the show they attended together, although hers wasn’t signed like this one is. He grins giddily at the small autographs signed in pen by each band member’s mugshot, delighted at how in character they are. 

“Well she might not be a fan, but I don’t find it embarrassing at all. I’m suddenly extremely jealous of whoever this potential partner of hers is. I’d _kill_ for a poster signed by all the Mechs!” Martin declares.

Tim groans. “God, it’s _that_ band? I thought we got you over them months ago. Please don’t tell me this is going to trigger another heartbreak because of your big old crush on that guy with all the belts.”

Jon finishes reading the note and stares at Tim like he’s taken a blow to the head. “His _what_ on _who_?”

Sasha clears her throat sharply, cutting off what would have been a _very strongly worded_ rebuttal from Martin. ’Guy with all the belts’ indeed! “Maybe we should leave Jon to it, hm? Like you said, Ms. Robinson will be expecting this back,” she says quickly. 

“Wait, hold on.” Tim snatches the note from Jon’s hand and reads it. “How are you supposed to ‘process’ this? We aren’t artifact storage or PR or literally anyone who deals with stuff like this. Is this like that whole deal with _Grifter’s Bone_ a couple years back? Do we have to research this?”

Jon snatches the note right back with a thoroughly offended huff. _“Certainly_ not. I can only guess that she needs the missing autograph.”

“So Martin!” Sasha abruptly puts a hand on his shoulder and starts attempting to steer him away. “You still haven’t told me all about your whole _deal_ last night, let’s get you to your desk and talk about it _at length_ \- actually, why are you even here? You should take the day off to recover!”

Martin doesn’t budge. He frowns down at Jon. “Missing autograph?” 

Jon won't meet his eyes for some reason. He instead reluctantly points to the very first photo on the poster and Martin realizes that Jon is right; Jonny D’Ville’s signature is notably absent from the poster. 

“Aw, that’s rotten luck,” Martin nods in sympathy. “Wonder what happened there?”

“I’d say this was probably from the first concert of that particular tour,” Jon sighs. “It was a very stressful time for everyone involved, and, well… sometimes you need to step away at inopportune times for your own sanity. It’s a shame, but I suppose it was meant to be if it’s made its way here now. Has anyone got- ahah!” Jon plucks a pen from the hedgehog and uncaps it, determination in every movement, and immediately scribbles directly onto the poster. 

Martin’s heart all but stops. “Jon! You can’t just do that!”

“I think you’ll find that I can,” Jon says, sounding smug as he continues to annotate the page. “Printed them that way for this very reason! Everyone ate it up, if I do say so myself. Aaaaand… finished!” He looks up at Martin, cheeks pink. “Well? What do you think?”

Martin can hardly bear to look; he only just narrowly escaped Elias with his job intact, and now he’s going to have to explain to him why Ms. Robinson’s very important document is ruined, all because Jonathan _fucking_ Sims has lost his mind and-

And signed the initials ‘JDV’ right over the picture of a very familiar face. Underneath the photo, where the band member’s names and roles are listed, Jon has harshly crossed out the words ‘first mate’ and written ‘captain’ in jagged capital letters that don’t match his handwriting at _all._

Martin’s eyes widen and he grabs the poster with both hands, bringing it close to his face. There’s another, more tame addition to the poster; ‘To Gerry- thanks for everything.’ But that hardly registers right now, because Martin is far more busy doing wild double takes between the man sitting in front of him and the man smiling devilishly from the poster. 

The silence stretches beyond awkward and well into uncomfortable. Jon looks at him in disbelief and makes a token effort at a laugh. “Well, I suppose this clears up a few things, doesn’t it?”

The floor seems to fall out from under Martin’s feet and he lurches, catching himself on the corner of Jon’s desk. “This can’t be happening,” he whimpers. 

“Wait a minute, that’s _Jon!”_ Tim shouts.

Sasha elbows him and hisses, “Honestly Tim, read the room!”

Tim whirls on her. “Wait, did you _know?_ ” He sounds unbelievably betrayed. “How could you not tell Martin about this? Actually, fuck that; how could you not tell _me?”_

They peel off into their own argument, leaving Martin gaping like a fish. “Jon?”

Jon gives a halfhearted shrug. “I thought you knew. You acted like it, anyway, with the tea, and the notes, and the _shirt-_ I was flattered, I think, but I just didn’t want it to come up in front of Elias. Not exactly what I had put on my academic resume, you know?”

“Oh my God.” Martin covers his face with his hands, mortified. “I- you literally _performed a song_ for me and it still didn’t click. Please kill me.”

“It’s okay. I was touched, honestly. When you kept wearing that shirt and talking about the band even after we fought, I thought that was your way of saying I was forgiven for how horribly I treated you. It was very gracious of you.”

“You mean the way you treated your insane fanboy stalker?” Martin laughs. He’s shaking with the shock of it all. “ _Fan mail,_ you said. Christ, Jon, I’m so sorry for making you feel uncomfortable. I swear I didn’t know!”

“Hey hey, no.” Tim cuts back into their conversation. “I only kind of get what’s going on, but Jon was still way out of line for yelling at you like that. You don’t have to apologize for him thinking his dumb college band was famous enough for him to be recognized on sight.”

Martin shoves his shoulder. “Hey, rude! It was a _great_ college band!” Although he certainly understands why Jon would have wanted to keep that part of his life separate from his job; even as just a fan, he still catches flack from Tim.

Jon shakes his head, still smiling softly. “It’s okay Martin, he’s absolutely right. My paranoia was no excuse to act like that. After how I behaved, I deserve a little bit of hazing for it. And you don’t have to play us up, we were certainly… different. As long as nobody starts playing the old concert tapes, we should be- oof!”

Sasha all but shoves Jon out of his chair to forcibly access his computer. ”YouTube? Somebody _please_ tell me it’s on YouTube. I promised myself I wouldn’t look it up but if you _insist._ ”

Jon wobbles after his ejection, staggering a few steps before righting himself on Martin’s outstretched arm. “Hey! We’re on the clock, you know!” he protests, but it’s pointless. Martin puts a careful hand on his shoulder, to steady or comfort he doesn’t know. In turn, Jon’s fingers tighten on his sleeve in a seemingly unconscious grasp for an anchor. “Sasha, Tim- _please.”_

Tim crowds up behind Sasha to spy over her shoulder. “Oh fuck off, there’s a _website!_ You wrote fiction for your bandsona?!” 

“Hey, there’s a ‘Gunpowder Tim’ on this dossier, too. Anything _you’d_ like to share with the class, Stoker?”

“Coincidence,” Jon and Martin say simultaneously. They look at one another with surprise, and Jon finally seems to notice that he’s glued to Martin’s side. He awkwardly clears his throat and backs up a step. “Yes, er. Coincidence. Quite.”

There’s a cry of triumph from Sasha and Martin finally brings himself to look and- _oh no_. 

“We’ve got a photo shoot!” she crows. “Tim, check out that _wicked_ makeup. That’s a nice close-up, Jon. The gun prop really brings out the manic look in your eyes.”

Tim does check out the makeup, doing exaggerated double and triple takes between Jon and the screen. “That’s literally insane. I refuse to believe that’s actually _our Jon.”_

Jon flushes, but he doesn’t quite look angry. If Martin didn’t know any better, he’d swear Jon was pleased. “I’d take offense to that, but it really was quite a time consuming get-up. _I_ wouldn’t say it makes me completely unrecognizable, but…” Here he glances back at Martin with a small smile. “It clearly does the trick well enough.”

“Ah,” a new voice says. “I was wondering what was keeping you.”

The four of them jump guiltily as Elias walks over, peering at the poster and then the website that his employees are focusing on instead of their actual jobs. Martin can practically see steam billowing from Jon’s ears as his brain sputters and dies from sheer panic. He’s not far behind, himself- he completely forgot about sending Jon upstairs!

“Elias!” Martin squeaks. “This is, er, I mean to say that-“

“I’m _so_ sorry,” Jon blurts out. 

“Sorry? Whatever for?” Elias asks calmly. “I of all people won’t begrudge you a little bit of indulgent vanity, Jon. It really is a very nice photo.”

A beat of silence, and Tim throws his hands up. “ _Elias_ knows?! Why am I always the last one to hear about everything?”

“Because you’re usually the first to speak about them,” Elias answers promptly before addressing Jon. “Now, if Martin would be so kind as to make that delivery, I do still need to speak with you about the assignment.”

“Th-the assignment. Of course. After you.” Jon nods mechanically and follows Elias out, leaving Martin with the task of delivering the newly completed poster and picking his jaw up off the floor. 

Sasha puts a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Martin? Are you okay?”

“You’ve known since that first big fight, haven’t you?” he asks softly. 

“Earlier,” she admits. “It took every trick I knew to keep you and Tim from noticing that out of his twelve Facebook friends, six had the band linked in their bio. He could scrub his own history, but not theirs.”

Martin’s head aches. “Fuck, Sasha. Why didn’t you _tell_ me?”

She fixes him with a look. “Martin, you _loved_ The Mechanisms. You told us what an important part of your life their music was, and you were inconsolable for two months when they announced their farewell tour. Do you think I wanted to ruin that for you _and_ hurt Jon by airing out business he clearly wanted kept secret?”

“No,” Martin admits. It wouldn’t have been a good idea at all, and he might have actually lost a great source of comfort over it while Jon would have hated them all forever. 

But things with Jon are different now. Martin got the chance to get an idea of Jonathan Sims beyond who he was as Jonny D’Ville. Jon, who can’t make tea properly and who doesn’t own a cat but has names for them tucked away in the back of his mind, and who climbs fire escapes but gets nauseated going down stairs too quickly. And God help him, but Martin _likes_ that idea of Jon. He likes it rather a lot. 

Oh. 

Oh _no._

“Tim?”

“Yeah, Mart-o?”

Martin carefully rolls the poster into its tube and holds it out to Tim. “Will you please take this to Ms. Robinson in the archives? I think… I need to take a day off after all. I’m gonna head out.”

Tim nods and takes it from him without protest. He’s such a good friend; it’s a shame Martin’s going to have to hide this from him. “Sure thing, mate. Go home and get some rest.”

Martin will certainly do that. He feels like he could sleep for a hundred years. And then, after that… well. He _has_ been meaning to relisten to his favorite album. Maybe he’ll even get through it without spontaneously combusting over the crush he apparently _still_ has on that man with all the belts. 

Well, at least he doesn’t have a signed poster of the guy or anything. _That_ would just be embarrassing, never mind that he’s already admitted he’d kill for it _._ Whoever Gerry is, Martin absolutely is not one bit jealous of this _poster_ _boy_. And even if he were? He’d be perfectly justified, thank you very much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ta-da! That's all she wrote (literally.) Thank you all so much for reading this far and sticking with me. This story has helped me through quarantine, family drama, relationship anxiety- the works. It grew so far past what I had originally planned and that's entirely due to the support I received from everyone who read it. This is the longest thing I've written in a while, and the longest thing I've actually finished in even longer. I'm ready to put it to bed but I love every second I spent daydreaming and planning and writing it. I know we're on hiatus now but I hope this gives y'all a little bit of levity while we wait to finish our rich chocolate torte of tragedy.


End file.
